Month: November 2008

What would a truly Senior-friendly Operating System look like?

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From many sessions helping seniors with their computer problems, I’ve gleaned some idea of how they think a computer should behave.

Note that the ideas listed here only apply to the current generation of seniors. It is doubtful that when the current generation of children grow old, they will have the same requirements.

My usability wish list:

  • Most important is that the interface be DOCUMENT-based, not application-based. There should be no distinction between the operating system or shell (Finder, Desktop, whatever) and the applications. In other words, there should be only one big application that does everything.
  • For example, the idea that there is a separate application to manage and edit photos and one to edit text is a needless complexity.
  • Tree-based file systems are completely lost on them – there has to be a simpler way to find documents.
  • Documents should end up in only one place, with no alternatives. They should not be asked to add meaningful metadata to anything. The computer must figure it out somehow. Perhaps they could be asked once to find a picture of each family member, and from then on, the computer could recognize that person and tag them for searches.
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Topic not found error on Perception quiz created using QML

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I’ve been working on several custom Questionmark Perception quizzes lately. As sometimes happens, it is not possible to use the Authoring Manager’s Question Editor to create the questions, so I created an example question in the Editor that was as close as possible to the one I wanted, then exported it to QML and modified it to get the custom structure that I wanted. Then I duplicated it and wrote the entire quiz in QML.

When I tried out the quiz created by importing these questions, the quiz came up with no problems, but on trying to submit the answers, it gave a “Topic not found” error.

It turns out that you must have a TOPIC attribute stated in the QML or it will error out. I don’t recall this being the case before, but it definitely is the case now.

RIGHT: 

<QUESTION ID="3084430213002589" DESCRIPTION="01. Question title goes here" TOPIC=topic titlesubtopic title" STATUS="Normal"> 
<ANSWER QTYPE="FIB">

WRONG:

<QUESTION ID="3084430213002589" DESCRIPTION="01. Question title goes here" STATUS="Normal"> 
<ANSWER QTYPE="FIB">
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Mixing Question Types Within a Question in Perception Quizzes

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We had a request to mix fill-in-the-blank type choices with select-a-blank choices within a single question. Questionmark Perception really isn’t set up to do this, so of course I had to see if I could get around it’s limitations. You can add HTML and javascript to a question though, so I thought of this nefarious back-door trick to fool Perception into taking both answers. Unfortunately it still requires accuracy on the part of the user, so perhaps it is not very useful. They must not type spaces, and must type the answer first, then select the units – in order. That’s a lot to ask.

On the other hand, this particular quiz was set up primarily because the users are required to demonstrate absolutely perfect accuracy in this topic, so perhaps it is acceptable in this type of situation. I’ll probably add a javascript that strips spaces, too.

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Caching in Google Gadgets

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When creating a Google gadget that pulls data from an XML file, you will probably notice that the data doesn’t update right away in the gadget even after you have changed the file. This caching behavior can make it very difficult to troubleshoot, and you’ll probably want to shut it off while developing.
It took me a while to find this so I’m posting it here:

From Google’s “Refreshing the Cache” instructions:


To make sure your gadget fetches fresh new content at least once per interval, simply specify a value (measured in seconds) for the refreshInterval parameter. For example:
// Fetch fresh content every half hour
_IG_FetchContent("http://news.google.com/?output=rss", callback, { refreshInterval: (60 * 30) });

// Fetch fresh content every 10 minutes
_IG_FetchContent("http://news.google.com/?output=rss", callback, { refreshInterval: (60 * 10) });

// Fetch fresh content every 30 seconds
_IG_FetchContent("http://news.google.com/?output=rss", callback, { refreshInterval: 30 });

// Disable caching completely and fetch fresh content every time --  !! Try to avoid using this !!
_IG_FetchContent("http://news.google.com/?output=rss", callback, { refreshInterval: 0 });

function callback(response) { ... }
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Dialogs too big in Vista to fit on small laptop screen

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My first attempts to work with Vista have definitely been an “experience”. I’m trying to get a Lenovo ThinkPad set up for use primarily for Qwizdom and Powerpoint, which would seem to be well within the limits of what Microsoft intended, but you almost have to wonder if they ever tried Vista on a laptop before releasing it! What a mess!

The default size of windows is often just a little too big for the screen. I’ve double and triple checked the screen resolution – it is set to maximum. We did set the default font size larger than the minimum because it is too hard to see otherwise.

Yet the windows are all over the place in sizing – sometimes they are correct, sometimes obviously wrong, with title bars above the top of the screen or dialogs with Accept/Cancel buttons below the bottom of the screen.

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Installing Adobe Reader on Vista

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The case of the missing confirmation dialog
A problem I’ve encountered several times on Vista: dialogs will open, then refuse to disappear, and the Windows Task Manager simply tells you they are “expecting a response”. They are “expecting a response” from a confirmation dialog that has completely disappeared.

This seems to happen when another window pops up and steals focus unexpectedly. The confirmation dialog is not hidden behind any other windows, nor minimized, but simply vanished. This can be very confusing even when you know what you are looking for. This happened while I was installing Adobe Reader. Here’s what it looked like when it got stuck:

adobeReaderInstaller.JPG

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Connecting to wireless networks on Vista

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We were having trouble connecting a ThinkPad to a local wireless network. It would first say there were no networks available, then when I would locate one, it kept requesting Username, Password and Domain, as if there were an authentication server involved. The wireless network is simply set up with a WEP key, so there are no individual users associated with it – anyone with the WEP key can log on.

It turned out that previous efforts to connect had set up a “wireless network” entry in a list somewhere which needed to be deleted and set up again correctly.

  1. IMPORTANT: be sure to check that the wireless switch on the front of the laptop is turned on. It is difficult to see and it must be turned on or all your other efforts to connect will be unsuccessful.
  2. First, select Start Menu > Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center. Under “Tasks”, click Manage wireless networks.
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Changing the window scope in Firebug

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If I had to choose one piece of advice for new web developers, I’d tell them to learn to use Firebug. Firebug is probably the most valuable debugging tool available, but if you are just getting started, it may seem pretty opaque at first.

In addition, some things do not appear to work as advertised. In particular, the “cd” function does nothing as far as I can tell.

The page that documents the commands you can use within Firebug lists the cd command as a way of changing the window scope:

Picture 23.png

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