I made a new gizmo for SNF called 15 Ways. I hope you like it.
You’ll have to use a Mozilla-based browser like Firefox for everything to work. This is unfortunate but necessary, because it’s heavy on the Javascript, and I’m not Google. Big thanks to pusgums for testing and helpful suggestions.
thanks. it was written as an exercise to muck around with the latest client-side web development fads — and to keep my mind off a paper I was working on. so it does indeed use ajax. in france, they call it “bon ami.”
an obvious inspiration was 43 Things, which is a neat site, but using that site for a while made me feel like i was in a stephen covey book. this should make you feel like you’re in a borges book, or a rabelais book, or a flann o’brien book, or a gilbert sorrentino book, or even a nick hornby book. well, whatever you want, really.
would it be better if i maybe popped up a little warning before deleting something?
yeh, maybe an additional list property, during the list-creation process, like “editable by others, with warnings”. that way, you can still have the option of having lists without the warnings.
however, a borges book would probably tend towards the fragility of no warning.
i agree about the 43 things. i’m too embarrassed about not meeting any of my goals to use it. i know the 7th heaven but hardly any 7 habits.
that was fast!
i was showing your work to a couple of ui designers tonight. while we all agreed that the thing has rock-star status embedded in the code, there is a quirk about the list-creation process that might need more highlighting, or obviousness. the fields for list name and list description are not obviously fields. you have a subtle box that appears when you mouse over it, but maybe it needs to be more obvious that it’s an entry field. i am not certain but there might be a way to change the arrow into a hand or somesuch.
ok, looks like the arrow changes into a text-cursor, which it should when it’s over text.
really the main point of this feedback concerns the inconsistency of the appearance of entry fields. for list-title and list-desciption it’s one thing, and for list-item it’s another. since there’s a conventional-looking form for the list-item entry, it becomes subconsciously nonobvious that the list-title and list-description are also editable. also, there’s a really cute movie of a monkey teasing a tiger that everyone ought to see
wow, thanks for the great feedback; that’s very thoughtful and helpful. okay, so offhand, some solutions might be:
1) highlight the click-to-edit items with a bright color like yellow, as flickr does.
2) like you mentioned, change the cursor to a hand cursor.
3) change the default text to read something like, “click here to change your title.” i like this the most, but i think people tend to consciously or subconsciously screen out anything that looks like instructions for some reason.
4) skip the fancyness and make the title and description fields on the list creation page ordinary text input boxes. this might be the best, because it’s the least subtle and the most consistent. (i was aiming for a WYSIWYG list creation process, but i can see how that doesn’t mesh too well with the expectations of a user already familiar with HTML forms.)
5) genetically engineer tigers with opposable thumbs and prehensile tails so that they can more effectively engage the monkey nuisance.
what do you think?
a combination of #1 and #3?
sentry · March 11, 2005 2:45 PM
brilliant. does it use the nifty ajax magicks? the drag and drop to reorder is especially surprisingly pleasing. i wonder if it’s too easy to delete things, though; i clicked on the [x] next to Serpent and the Rainbow out of curiosity and it went bye-bye just like that.