Category: Web Building

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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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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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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Error #1056: Cannot create property x on loaded clip in AS3

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I had a particularly sticky flash problem where a MovieClip worked perfectly when run on its own, but when loaded into a container clip using a loader, would give:

Error #1056: Cannot create property someProperty on loaded clip myLoadedClip
At first I thought it was some kind of timing problem or failure to declare the items in the clip, but it turned out, simply adding the word dynamic to the class definition fixed the problem. Dynamic classes can have properties added at runtime. The MovieClip class is already dynamic, but apparently, the dynamic property is removed in some other part of my code.

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useButtonMode = true not working in AS3

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In Actionscript 3, you may find yourself wondering why when you use “useHandCursor” on a MovieClip, the cursor remains an arrow on mouse_down.

In AS3, useHandCursor is a property of the SimpleButton class. if an object has “buttonMode” set to true, by default “useHandCursor” will also be true. If is is not set to buttonMode, setting “useHandCursor” to true will do nothing.

On objects that are set to buttonMode, setting “useHandCursor to false will prevent the cursor from changing to a hand on MOUSE_DOWN.

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