By Matthew Hile on 10/19/2006 5:04 AM

In its default installation DNN (up to and including 3.2.2) breaks the expected user experience with regards to links. By default the style sheet sets links text-decoration: none;. What this means is that the user has only a slight shift in color to identify a link. Moreover, unlike the browser's typical default, visited links do not look any different than unvisited links. I for one rely on being easily able to identify a link because it is underlined and whether or not I have visited it based on its color. Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox article entitled Guidelines for Visualizing Links provides great information on why this is important.

So how do you fix the problem? There are two options.

• For a single site go to the Style Sheet Editor which you will find on the Admin > Site Settings page and add "text-decoration: underline;" (without the quotes) to the a:link and a:visited styles.
• If you want to fix all of the sites change the a:link entries in the ..\Portals\_default\default.css file.
  

Making these changes helps your users better understand and use your site.

UPDATE: This code only works in Firefix and not IE (tested in version 7). After much searching, experimentation, and trial and error work I found that dropping the trailing semicolon allowed this approach to work in both browsers.

By Matthew Hile on 9/21/2006 1:08 PM

I like Joel Spolsky's take on the software world. He also is interested in good user design. In a recent review of Sprint's new Power Vision Network phone he has an hilarious (or sad if you were the designer of this disaster) review of the free phone they sent him. The quote I liked the best

13. Remove the battery and put it in again. That should get you back to the main menu.

To get the full effect and read about a really poor user experience read his full post.

 

By Matthew Hile on 9/19/2006 8:53 AM

OK so I get a technical magazine each month in the mail. There is an article which attracts my interest and a reference to a “InstantDoc” id so I can quickly get the supporting materials and the code from the web. Cool!

Step 1 - So I log onto the web site. First it tells me that I need to be registered. So I search my records to see if I have already registered and find nothing. Try to create a new registered user and it appears that I am already registered (OK so this was my bad for not recording my information in my secure ID/PW file.) So I try to get an emailed reminder and find that my registration has my old email address that no longer works. So an email message to the publisher asking them to change my email address. I never got a reply but checked again in a few days and could then send my current email address the reminder.

Step 2 – So I log onto the web site with my ID/PW and request the “InstantDoc” and up it pops. Nope. Now it tells me that I must associate my user name with my customer number. Where is my customer number? On the package that encased the publication which is, naturally, long in the trash. That seems like a reasonable place to put this number so I wait for the next issue to arrive…

Step 3 – My next monthly issue arrives and I save my customer label and head back to the web site. I enter my ID/PW and try to associate my customer number so that I can get my subscriber access to the “InstantDoc.” In response I get a message telling me that I need to contact customer support and get them to associate my ID and customer number. Off goes an email and the next day I get a friendly response telling me that the two pieces of information have been associated and am good to go.

Step 4 – Imagine my excitement. I log on to the site with my ID/PW, enter the magic “InstantDoc” number and…well I get to a page that has an abstract about the article but where is the additional information? I click the “subscriber only” link – nope that just give me the opportunity to subscribe to the publication (there is also another “Subscribe to …” link just in case I missed the first opportunity). How about the “Main article” link? After all the blurb with the “InstantDoc” did promise “an expanded version,” but no the same information on the web as in the print version. But wait there is a sidebar link surely that will give me the additional information? Again disappointment, it took me back to the initial abstract page.

I tried other links. I could get a listing of everything that author had written, a listing of similar articles, order reprints in various formats. I could Digg the article, add it to Del.icio.us, email it, print it, add a readers’ comment…lots of stuff but not what I was looking for - the expanded article and a download of the sample code.

Step 5 - Wait a minute. For safe browsing I use the Firefox extension NoScript I try turning scripting on and voila … another advertisement with the opportunity to subscribe to the print version AND for an additional $5.95 a month I can get a “Online Pass.”

Perhaps the information I wanted is there somewhere. Perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps if I were to spend the additional $s I could get access to the additional information. Perhaps I couldn’t. Perhaps there is something in the fine print in the publication or on the web site that would explain all of this. Or perhaps there isn’t. At this point I have been trying for a month to get the advertised “sample scripts” and it is just not worth that sort of time.

I get a lot of IT related publications at the Institute and this is not the first time that one of them has become more trouble than it was worth. Print publications are struggling trying to figure out how to survive in the era of free and bountiful internet based resources. I hope that they succeed because I actually do like and learn by reading what they publish. But in their struggles they are becoming more and more irritating making me much less likely to subscribe. So in their attempts to make their way in this new world they are driving off those of us who are supporting them.

By Matthew Hile on 7/28/2006 9:25 AM

According to a 2005 Yahoo survey it may not make any difference if people know the answer to this question.

27% of online users consume third-party content on these pages without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.

So one clear area of focus is how provide folks with the cues that they can use to add this active content to their web browsing experience. Having it built into the browser, as is true for the Live Bookmarks in the current version of Firefox and will be true for the new version of Internet Explorer, will be a great jump up. Having it built into one's email client, as will be found in the new Outlook 2007 will also help.

Another help would be to change the term we use from RSS to feed or subscription. These may help "real users" feel more comfortable with the process and increase their use.

By Matthew Hile on 7/27/2006 6:29 AM

To continue my exploration for a good "real user" description of RSS I turned to Wkiipedia. Their definition includes these statements:

...the news media is utilizing RSS by bypassing traditional news sources. Consumers and journalists are now able to have news constantly fed to them instead of searching for it.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. ...

These highlight a very important advantage of RSS over the more traditional emailed newsletters. An RSS subscription does not require you to give out your email address. Thus you will get no spam.

By Matthew Hile on 7/26/2006 5:18 AM

I work a lot with folks who are able to use a computer for things like email, word processing, and web browsing. More to the point, my work is to create web sites that these sorts of folks can use. One of the technologies I actively promote is Real Simple Syndication (RSS). Invariably, when ever I mention this the first response is "What?" Skeptic's blog Dead2.0 asked a real user, his mother, What is RSS? After a quick Google search her response, "I just don’t have a clue!"

Dave Winer's comment to that post had a really nice description.

When people ask me what RSS is good for, I start with “automated web surfing.” It gets you more news for the time you put into using the Internet. If you don’t want more news then RSS is probably not for you. But if there are subjects (that) you are intensely interested in, and if the people covering the topics also offer the information in RSS form, then your computer (or a web site) can make web surfing a richer and perhaps more productive experience.

So I think that this is a good place to start but I will continue my search for a way to tell/show real users the possibilities and benefits of RSS.

By Matthew Hile on 7/25/2006 5:57 AM

Two articles have caught my attention this week relating to the information we place on the web about ourselves and its impact on our lives. 

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new article (Volume 52, Issue 47, Page B6) about Juan R.I. Cole a professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history who was denied a job at Yale perhaps for his "strong opposition to the war in Iraq and to the treatment of the Palestinians" expressed in his blog, Informed Comment.

In Internetweek, Amy DeCarlo had an article which stated that "36 percent (of executive recruiters) have eliminated a candidate from consideration because of information they found online."

Is this new? No, people have always lost job offers based on what they have said and what others have said about them. What is new is that now we put a lot of information about our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs onto the internet, a very public space. Moreover, with sites like the wayback machine, even removing that information from the original site will not remove it from the web.

So what is the take home message? Be authentic - represent the real you in your online presence. Be ready to take the consequences of the real you because you will be judged by that presence. However, at least one advantage of this new state of affairs is that now the information being used is public and not supposition, rumor, and innuendo. With public information the decision making process is more transparent and we can see and understand how others see and understand us.

By Matthew Hile on 7/19/2006 10:48 AM

In attempting to call a web service in DNN I got an error.

"System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type System.Net.WebPermission, System, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 failed.
   at System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.CheckHelper(PermissionSet grantedSet, PermissionSet deniedSet, CodeAccessPermission demand, PermissionToken permToken)
   at System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(PermissionToken permToken, CodeAccessPermission demand, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Int32 checkFrames, Int32 unrestrictedOverride)
   at System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(CodeAccessPermission cap, StackCrawlMark& stackMark)
   at System.Security.CodeAccessPermission.Demand()
   at System.Net.HttpRequestCreator.Create(Uri Uri)
   at System.Net.WebRequest.Create(Uri requestUri, Boolean useUriBase)
   at System.Net.WebRequest.Create(Uri requestUri)
   at System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebClientProtocol.GetWebRequest(Uri uri)
   at System.Web.Services.Protocols.HttpWebClientProtocol.GetWebRequest(Uri uri)
   at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.GetWebRequest(Uri uri)
   at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters)
   at ReferenceManagerInterop.ReferenceManagerProxy.SearchAndReturnIDs(String version, String searchExpression, Int16 databaseCount, String sortKey, Int64 maxRecords, String[] databaseArray, String[]& results_list)
   at ReferenceListing.Display()"

There were a few sources of information about this both in and out of DNN (e.g., Cathal Connlly's post,  this link, or this one). However, none of them seemed to eactly solve my problem. or seemed to fit what my configuration files looked like.

What finally worked was to edit the web_medium.config file adding "<URI uri="http://bibliography.mimh.edu/cgi-bin/RSSoapServer"/>" in the following section.


<IPermission class="WebPermission" version="1">
    <ConnectAccess>
        <URI uri="$OriginHost$"/>
        <URI uri="http://bibliography.mimh.edu/cgi-bin/RSSoapServer"/>
    </ConnectAccess>
</IPermission>
This gave me the needed access and stopped the errors.

One significant problem with this solution is that you need to have access to the web_mediumtrust.config file. If you have a way to do this without having this access please let me know.

As a side note I also had to add a webServices setting to the web.config file in the format of:

<system.web>
    <webServices>
      <soapExtensionTypes>
        <add type="ReferenceManagerInterop.SoapExtension.SoapClientExtensionInterceptor, ReferenceManagerInterop" priority="1" group="0" />
      </soapExtensionTypes>
    </webServices>
...
 </system.web>

   
     
       
     
   
    ...

By Matthew Hile on 6/6/2006 4:58 AM

I have used Word's document comparison feature to look at the difference between two documents. However, it has always been somewhat confusing and I have never really felt comfortable with it.

In my use of the beta version of Word 2007 I found a very functional and obvious implementation of the document comparison feature that rocks.



Four useful windows are provided. The main center windown contains a document with all of the changes marked for review, accept or reject as desired. The two windows on the right contain the two documents being compared. Finally the left hand window lists all of the changes. Click on a change to see that change location in each of the other windows.

The process provides all of the information needed in a clear and simple display. Great user interface design.

By Matthew Hile on 3/31/2006 3:18 PM

The scenario

• A computer becomes unresponsive in the middle of an operation.
• The three finger solute (Ctr-Alt-Del) does nothing so I use the power switch.
• The computer refuses to boot giving me the blue screen of death before it restarts. It loops through this over and over.
  
• There are some files on the computer that I NEED.

The solution

I boot the computer with a CD copy of Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net/) and relatively easily find the files that were placed on my desktop. Remember that I am a LINUX newbie and really know very little about how to use the OS. Now how to move them?

1. Tried using my gmail account to email them to myself. No luck the files were to big.
2. Rebooted after plugging in a USB Zip drive. Knoppix did not recognize it (or equally likely I did not know how to tell it to recognize it).
3. Rebooted after plugging in a USB thumb drive. Still no luck. It recognized the drive but has it marked as read only.
   
4. Logged onto our email system via its web access and added the files as an attachment which I then mailed to myself. Worked like a charm.
5. Mucked around with the flash drive unmounting it and messing with the permissions until finally it allowed me to write to it.

So that is the Good News part of the story. I was able to get the files I needed without any significant difficulty. Knoppix did a great job of with the disk. In fact when I booted with the XP CD it would not even recognize that the drive had been formatted so at this point I was really impressed.

The rub

Then I got to thinking. My computer is secured with a frequently (to frequently for my tastes) password. Yet all I need to do was to slide in a CD and I had access to my files. Not a very pleasant thought for someone who has been accused of being security obsessed. 

Now I do remember seeing somewhere the option to encrypt my NTFS formatted drive. I’m not sure where that was but it sure did not come up in the last few hours as I reformatted the drive and reinstalled XP with all of it’s SPs. So it is not something that the average user will find (or use).

Today, none of the files on the computer was particularly sensitive. No client information, no financial records, no steamy notes to Allison. But that would not always be the case. This would be Bad News. So now I am on the lookout for a good encryption program that will allow me to easily store some files in an encrypted space so that, in a similar situation, I will not be able to retrieve the files.

So that is it - basically your good news – bad news sort of story.