February 19th, 2007

blog style

  • Monday, 19 February, 2007
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My latest post resulted in a comment accusing me (in jest I am sure) of being a usability nutter.  The comment was a fair one.  But it raises a couple of questions about blogging;

1.  Should I edit the offending blog in the light of the comment?  Probably  not.  I’ve responded to the comment and I’ll leave it at that.

2.  More fundamentally, how should one blog?  I tend to bash out a stream of consciousness, usually using notepad on the train to work.  I then upload it and post it.  I’ve not yet put a spell-checker on WordPress so often publish with typos.  I rarely  proof read (beyond a cursory glance) what I’ve written.  I contrast this with other bloggers who refine what they write and only publish when they are really happy with the article.  Personally, I like the urgency of blogging, just getting stuff out.  And if every now and then I get stuff wrong, I’ll be humbled and move on.
(BTW, I’m not a usability nutter:) )

Frustrations with a smaller “Enter” key

  • Monday, 19 February, 2007
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I  was recently in Hong Kong; my Chinese colleague had the same laptop as me, a Dell D610, yet using her machine caused no end of frustration.  whilst my laptop has a big “enter” key in the shape of an inverse L, her keyboard only has a small key the same size as the backspace key.  When I went to press Enter, more often than not I hit “\”.  There was probably a good reason for this design decision being made, but it breaks a fundamental usability concept – that of consistency.
chinese and english dell laptop keyboards