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Coming to San Francisco: Web 2.0 Expo
Posted on 03.29.07 by andyed @ 6:01 pm
I’ll be in SF in two weeks for the Web 2.0 expo. See my talk description over at my new “corporate” blog, alwaysBeTesting.com. Stay tuned here for Mozilla, cognitive science, javascript hackery, and other traditional topics. The new blog is focused on e-commerce, analytics, and user experience and attempts to be less of geek to geek venue, and more technologist to business practioner style effort. Filed under: General and HCI and Cognitive Psy Comments: None |
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A Zooming UI for Browsing from Live Labs and Minimo 0.2
Posted on 03.29.07 by andyed @ 5:33 am
The good folks at Microsoft’s Live Labs finally shipped! I got a peek at some of the efforts to get the DeepFish zooming browser done while at MSFT and can say that’s one of the sharpest teams in Redmond. The video demo shows off the fancy zoom effects. Right on the heels of the Minimo 0.2 release, looks my HTC is in for a workout this week. Read more on zooming UI’s (ZUIs) from the surfmind archives or see the wikipedia ZUI page. Filed under: Mozilla and HCI and PocketPC Comments: None |
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Is Ten Results the Wrong Number?
Posted on 03.25.07 by andyed @ 11:43 am
I discussed this with Jakob Nielsen at CHI last year, and Lou Rosenfield mentioned it at this year’s IA Summit (slide 26): Result 10 gets more clicks than position 9. Lou’s data looks a bit wonky, but the pattern replicates across a slew of different search experiences. This is interesting because it’s non-rational! If you believe in the ranking algorithms of web search, it should be the case that result 10 is less likely to answer your query than result 9. I have two hypotheses to explain this finding:
The infinite scroll that debuted briefly on web results during last summer’s Live.com beta (but was pulled before launch), normalized the click curve post result 7 to a normal descending function. Alas, this doesn’t help distinguish between the two alternatives! Filed under: General and Search and Cognitive Psy Comments: None |
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XUL Booster: Good stuff!
Posted on 03.24.07 by andyed @ 5:05 pm
I got Eclipse and the XUL Booster plugin running on OS X today. Very nice tool. I haven’t really given the XUL Runner integration and the XUL authoring support a thorough testing, but the wizard for setting up an extension, property editor for the install.rdf, and a XPI export wizard make it a joy to use compared to my recent attempts to resurrect expertise aged almost 3 years. The image shows, reading left to right, top down, the project wizard, XUL tag snippet panel, rdf editor, export dialogue, the file list of an extension generated with the wizard, and the final export pane with zip, etc. options. The only thing missing from the wizard is a GUID Generator. I’m working on some Mozwho like UI for an all.xml data dump from delicious… called LinkDeli. Installation is a bit painful if you don’t follow the XUL Booster site recommendations and start with the web tools build of Eclipse. Filed under: Mozilla and AddOns Comments: None |
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On the Evolution of Blogging: CNet dials up Jorn Barger on the First Weblogs
Posted on 03.20.07 by andyed @ 5:43 pm
Back in the day, among the set of “bloggers” dubbed by Kotke as “Ye Old Skoole” at some point not retrievable by the wayback machine, Dave Winer and Jorn Barger were some of the most dedicated daily publishers, amongst the “corporate media” of hotwired and suck. Jorn and Dave wrote very differently. Jorn invented the link blog well early on, adding periodic narrative commentary, while Dave pioneered a software platform punditry and life/industry observation daily rant with publishing automation. The CNet article focuses on the first dates claimed by both authors in 1997, but the initial defining actions of blogrolls and cross linking between posts really burgeoned from ‘98. It took a few more years to get more complete URI addressability and bi-directional links, but the conversational dynamic really took off in the nineties, culminating in my mind with the launch of There are lots of other interesting observations thinking back at this point, where blogs are just one flavor of user generated content, a giant conduit of spam, and an officially sold-out, corporate thing with revenue models and duplicitious advertising. While almost linkbait at this point for CNet, I enjoyed the read: Filed under: Blogging Comments: None |
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GetFirefox Eye Gaze Simulation
Posted on 03.05.07 by andyed @ 4:55 am
It’s been a tough few weeks as we relocated from the mothership/deathstar (Redmond) to Atlanta, but we’re settled in to our new home now. Here’s a teaser of some stuff in the pipeline. Back in grad school in 2003 I was working with eye-tracking and studying the visual system. The power of the brain to stitch together tiny bits of high resolution information to create the conscious experience of vision is amazing and I dreamed up the visualization shown below:
The idea in this pic is that the user is looking, at a slightly zoomed out focal depth, at the firefox download page with a fixation at the point of the cursor. The foveal, or high resolution area, is perceived in color, while the periphery is lower resolution and black and white. You can view the subsequent zoom to max focal depth and scan to the download firefox button in this .mov or .mp4 (lower res). Nodebox, a graphical programming tool for OSX, brought the implementation bar for this viz down far enough for it to make my quick hack list. Big props to a supportive forum community for helping me along. The results were compelling enough that I’ve reimplemented in Flash. There’s more to come on this work and on sharing some wisdom about how the visual system interacts with web pages — stuff somewhere between HCI research at UOregon and the Usability research at SURL. For now, I’ll leave you with the thought that the OSX and Mozilla community are somewhat similar in their (no cost tool) hackability and add-on model. Filed under: General and Mozilla and HCI and Cognitive Psy Comments: None |
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On SEO Radio
Posted on 02.13.07 by andyed @ 7:33 am
Catch my interview on SEO Radio at Noon today EST. I’ll update this post with a link to the archives, when available. We’ll be chatting in 3 segments: 1) My experience at MSFT and the state of the search industry. 2) E-commerce optimization and the conversion funnel (see modeling app). 3) Firefox and the history/future of the browser. Update - the archives are available: Segment 1 - Looking at MSN’s Live Search engine Segment 2 - Analyzing the Sales Funnel and Google Analytics Segment 3 - Firefox browser and suggested plug-ins for SEO Filed under: Mozilla and Search Comments: None |
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Just for fun: What makes the teletubbies interesting?
Posted on 02.11.07 by andyed @ 7:57 pm
Recent changes in my family life have led to the teletubbies becoming a household fixture. My new gig involves working with an eye-tracker in the usability lab. Just for fun, we took a look at how people view the tubbies. As with eye patterns on human faces, participants homed in on faces.  My guess is that the color variation from face to head intensifies this effect and the hands at the mouth add a twist.
Filed under: General and HCI and Cognitive Psy Comments: None |
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Feedback and Firefox: Improving Hendrix
Posted on 02.10.07 by andyed @ 5:03 pm
A serious problem with bugzilla for Firefox/Mozilla when I exited the community in 2004 was the profusion of duplicate bugs in the system. Bugzilla’s just not easy to search for an end-user among other issues. To lighten this load, and encourage more feedback, the mozilla team built Hendrix in early ‘05. It’s a simple feedback form. Gerv recently reported on his efforts at data analysis and makes a call for ideas to improve the utility of this data. It sounds like the community’s on track to some of the computational techniques for analyzing free text data, so I’ll propose a richer way to collect the feedback. Taking the best of HCI work, the critical incident method, and the power of the XUL DOM, we could create a feedback stream tagged with the user actions that lead up to the feedback event. So here’s what I’m imagining:
For the event trace, clicks are probably sufficient but for each click you need the ID + class path from the element clicked to the root item of the window. This allows aggregation around the toolbar, sidebar, prefs, etc (as documented in Edmonds, 2004 Behavior Research Methods). Oiy, my extension building todo list is already long. Recently, I did spend some time doing my homework on speed reading (a tiddly wiki) to aid firereader. Filed under: Mozilla and HCI Comments: None |
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Fun with OSX and HCI
Posted on 02.03.07 by andyed @ 12:02 pm
There’s a longstanding problem known as “lost in hyperspace“. The author of the Pathways (OSX) tool crafted it to solve the problem for Wikipedia, where there’s a rich and exposed underlying backbone of the information. Quite nifty. Here’s a view of my favorite concepts and disciplines around HCI.
Here’s a live view of my delicious feed for the two topics intersecting to create this blogpost.
Filed under: HCI and Visualization Comments: None |
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Mouse Gestures Lite — via userChrome.js
Posted on 02.02.07 by andyed @ 10:38 am
Since 2001, the optimoz gestures project has evolved dramatically and spurred a set of very cool mods or alternatives. The latest takes the cake though — gestures via a 200 line .js that can be added to user chrome and hand hacked to customize — we don’t need no stinkin pref panel! (though Mom might). From the publisher of the very cool scrapbook project… wish it did HTML notes. Filed under: Mozilla Comments: None |
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I’m baaaack.
Posted on 01.31.07 by andyed @ 11:41 pm
Just over two years ago I gave up firefox hacking and joined MSFT, working for the web search team at then MSN. I summarized that experience gently over at blogs.msdn, but in short, I’m no longer working for the empire. For this blog venue, let me just say there’s no ambiguity where the engine room is in the open source community. I’m glad to be back even if the usability lab is largely missing.
I’m loving my new macbook pro but heads down getting ready for the cross country move back to Atlanta. More details coming soon on my Firefox hacking plans — I’m working on reviving a widescreen dual pane hack from 2004 and my delicious firefox feed is hoppin. Filed under: Mozilla and Blogging Comments: None |
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Putting MochiKit to the Test: The Conversion Funnel
Posted on 01.03.07 by andyed @ 8:21 pm
I’ve been on an extended vacation back east and took some time to get my javascript skills up to web 2.0 status, putting the cross browser toolkit MochiKit to it’s paces. Check out the E-Commerce Transaction Funnel Explorer. It’s a little DHTML app that mimics an excel spreadsheet for modeling multi-step processes with a dual numeric and visual representation. I built the graphic rendering some years ago with a server side process, but the maturity of one of the leading javascript libraries enabled me to implement the pre-existing functionality and more with no server side magic. I’m also experimenting with a new data logging framework for intra-page activity. More on that later, please be patient if you get an hourglass. Filed under: General and HCI and Visualization and WebDev Comments: 1 Comment |
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Aptana, the Web IDE, rocks!
Posted on 10.14.06 by andyed @ 5:38 pm
A javascript focused IDE. Bonus feature is direct FTP editing. I’m in love. Based on Eclipse, but that’s pretty irrelevant. I am working with Visual Web Developer Express but finding the direct FTP slow and the JS support not nearly so robust as Aptana — though maybe I just haven’t found how to use it. Filed under: WebDev and DHTML Comments: None |
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The Best (Ranked) of Firefox Blogs: Get Your OPML Here!
Posted on 10.12.06 by andyed @ 8:42 pm
Over on my MSDN blog I’ve written about my first public hack in *the two years* I’ve been at microsoft. Shocking! Fix is in the works Here’s a little hattip to the faithful Mozilla community that still hasn’t dropped me from planet.mozilla despite years of neglect. Peruse the top 100 Live Search ranked Firefox RSS feeds using my firefox macro, or just grab the OPML directly. Filed under: General and Mozilla and Blogging Comments: 1 Comment |
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The action’s over there…
Posted on 10.11.06 by andyed @ 9:59 pm
at my BORG based blog: blogs.msdn.com/andyed Filed under: General Comments: None |
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Blogging Around the Bubble: Retrospective Highlights from ‘99 to ‘02
Posted on 05.10.06 by andyed @ 9:25 pm
11/1/1999
7:56:12 PM An Early Opensource Web UI Element for the Commons 12/6/1999
8:13:02 PM
This DHTML Stuff is Powerful 7/30/2000
6:43:22 AM Browser Evolution Solves a Usability Issue on the Web 11/7/2000
7:18:17 PM Technological Hyperchange I The second was a kiosk 11/12/2000
7:07:08 P 2001 Open Source Calls 1/11/2001
7:59:18 PM What to do in case of a layoff? Hack DHTML! 2/3/2001
1:04:17 PM The Mouse Gestures Plugin Gets Real 9/25/2001 7:21:10 PM Early Ajaxian Magic from SGI
DHTML Spotting: SGI has an inline popup search box, reducing the amount of real estate required for the search option but preventing the need to wait for another page load to be able to search (like the $^#$% mozilla.org site). It even works in Mozilla. 8/8/2001
10:30:35 AM
A Gem of an Idea
Interesting work from the GUIR gang at Berkeley: the idea is to augment links with identifying keywords so that in the case of a 404, the keywords can be searched — robust hyperlinks. 5/5/2001 10:46:10 AM |