The beta will be released soon and it’s going to set Microsoft a clear leader in RIA battle. Here are some features:

1. WPF controls
2. Cross-domain network requests and built-in support for REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and plain HTTP
3. Sockets
4. LINQ and LINQ to XML
5. HTML DOM access
6. 4.3MB runtime for Windows / Mac / Linux (planned) and IE, Firefox and Safari

Details are here — check it out!

Jakob Nielsen writes about some frequent mistakes in application design.

Here is his list (with my comments)

1. Non-Standard GUI Controls (sometimes you have to use non-standard controls, if they can do the job better; otherwise we would stop the GUI design evolution in 60-ties)
2. Inconsistency (inconsistency is bad, but in the context vs consistency battle context wins)
3. No Perceived Affordance (agreed)
4. No Feedback (agreed)
5. Bad Error Messages (I would generalize this to include bad copy in general)
6. Asking for the Same Info Twice (who does that after all?)
7. No Default Values (agreed)
8. Dumping Users into the App (I didn’t understand this one)
9. Not Indicating How Info Will Be Used (hmm… I don’t suppose explaining everything is a good idea; it’s better to let user correct the mistake easily, when necessary)
10. System-Centric Features (I would call them useless features — pretty obvious)

The complete article, while being a bit on a linkbait side, worth checking out too.

Here are my rules for the new product development:

1. Start from something interesting and intriguing. Ignore usual expectations at that point
2. Develop your vision fully before starting to think about standard features
3. Keep it fun, keep on trying new things. Otherwise they’ll stand up and go
4. At some point they’ll start crying about the missing standard features and asking to add them. Don’t!
5. Announce you will do that, but make yet another new and cool thing instead
6. That will make them really want it
7. Go ahead and add the standard stuff… wow

Apple executed it perfectly with the iPhone (and its SDK), why don’t you try it at home?

Happy Valentine’s day everyone!

“Are you sure you want to delete this item?”

Sounds familiar, does it? Just a couple of years ago every application had dozens of message boxes and confirmation dialogs popping up here and there. Now it’s changing. In Loudtalks we decided we won’t use any.

So how do you handle the above mentioned situation without throwing a message box?

Implement Undo for any action the user may regret a moment later. Sometimes it could be tricky but most applications don’t have to do anything irreversible.

There are several caveats of course:

1) Sometimes you really have to do something, which can’t be reversed (like format the hdd).
2) Blind users accessibility should be taken into account.

Even if the action does require re-confirmation, you could do it in more elegant way. For example, use in-place confirmation button. Probably the best way to address accessibility issue is to implement a handler, which will announce the undo keyboard shortcut along with the fact that the action is completed, when screen reader software is detected.

Do you still use MessageBox in your software?