A Yahoo report about upcoming Windows 7 features includes a few that sound familiar…

• Let users decide the left-to-right order of icons in the task bar
• Display a contextual menu when you right-click on a task bar icon
• Auto-collect files stored in many different places elsewhere into a virtual folder

…at least one that sounds curious but useful…

• Drag two windows to screen left and right to auto-resize them for side-by-side comparison

…and some that sound hilariously ill-conceived:

• Shake an open window with the mouse to minimize all other windows
• Move the mouse to the bottom-right corner to make all windows temporarily transparent, then click to minimize them all

But what’s particularly amusing about the Yahoo article is the “back stories” explaining why Microsoft added these features to Windows 7:

Microsoft’s research showed Vista users commonly launching a series of programs, then closing and immediately reopening some.
Microsoft realized that these people wanted their programs to appear in the same order on the task bar every time…

…Microsoft had resisted the idea of hiding a key feature behind a right click, worried people wouldn’t find it. But the data showed
most people right-click on icons to see what that might do. — Behind the scenes with Windows 7, yahoo.com, April 19, 2009

These stories make it sound as though Microsoft is simultaneously channeling Apple (usability-driven) and Google (data-driven).

That window shaking, though? Pure Warner Bros..

Word Scramble for iPhone by Zynga appears at first to be yet another grid-based word game where you race the clock touching letters in sequence to spell words for points. Because these games are simple in concept, simple to implement, and offer good replay to gamers at little cost to developers, the App Store is full of them. Unfortunately, many appear to be crafted with more regard for turning a fast buck than for creating a fun experience.

Word Scramble Online

But Word Scramble is not only free and fun, it’s well-designed and includes some surprising but appreciated features:

• online play against the anonymous hordes
• online play against your friends, whom you invite from your Contacts list with a special code
• Play and Pass, letting you pass the iPhone between up to 4 players in turn

I’ve really enjoyed the online play, but once the round starts and you’re racing the clock against others, the hectic action highlights a few design choices of the main screen shown at right—not flaws exactly, but limitations that if addressed would make the game easier to play and more enjoyable.

When you’re playing, some things are important…

(more…)

Dictionary.com’s new iPhone app, released in late March, includes a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a word-of-the-day (WOTD) feature.

And it’s free. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary for iPhone costs 25 dollars. That’s got to hurt.

What’s good

• Fast.
• No connection needed to use the dictionary and thesaurus.
• Spoken audio pronunciations
• Suggests words as you type

What needs improvement

• Should remember you were in the Thesaurus when you last quit the app, and return you there after launch.
• Needs to display a Cancel button when the keyboard is shown. Right now, once you summon the keyboard, the only way to
  dismiss it other than by searching is to tap the little X icon in the search field twice.

• Encourages you to “Get our FREE Word of the Day email”, even though you’re already using that feature on iPhone.
• Suggested words need slighly larger targets. Right now, it’s too easy to accidentally tap the wrong one. Making matters worse, the definition page lacks a back button to let you see the suggested words list again.
• WOTD doesn’t let you see previous entries.
• WOTD doesn’t offer audio pronunciation.

What needs serious rethought

• Recent displays words you’ve viewed in the dictionary, thesaurus, and WOTD. It’s handy, but the design is odd:
  • WOTD should not be included. It needs its own history.

    Including the dictionary and thesaurus makes sense; including WOTD does not. Looking up a word in the dictionary or thesaurus and checking out the WOTD are different activities. If you already have a decent vocabulary, many of the words in WOTD may not interest you, yet they’ll still occupy space in Recent.

  • The buttons for viewing that word in the dictionary, thesaurus, or WOTD are too small and too close together.

    They’re unnecessary, in fact. The tab controller at the bottom of the screen already lets you move easily between dictionary, thesaurus, and WOTD, so if the app simply remembered which you had last used to view that word, tapping the word could default to where you last viewed it.

  • The color-coding used to distinguish the dictionary and thesaurus buttons is confusing. The colors would be a bit more effective if Recent included a legend, but it doesn’t. But again, the buttons are unnecessary.
  • Dear developers,

    About that Edit button…I understand your dilemma: you couldn’t put the Edit button on the bottom because you already had the tab controller there, and you couldn’t put it on the top because you’ve reserved the titlebar for branding. But real estate is too limited on the iPhone and convention too strong to usurp the titlebar for branding alone. Please move the Edit button to the titlebar.

    Thank you,
    A user

Some worry that Pixar’s approaching summer release, Up, will squander Disney’s money, that Disney paid too much for Pixar in the first place:

Some industry watchers, a few of them still griping about the hefty $7.4 billion that Disney paid for Pixar in 2006, are fretting about the film’s commercial potential, particularly when it comes to benefiting other Disney businesses. — Pixar’s Art Leaves Profit Watchers Edgy, nytimes.com, April 6, 2009

What would have been a good price? Disney’s golden goose—the company’s animation department—hadn’t laid many appealing eggs for years, and morale was low. If Pixar is able to spark a creative renaissance at Disney, which appears to be the case, how much is that worth?

Revenue from the Pixar theatrical releases plus merchandising has already passed $6B, plus Pixar’s films have inspired themed rides and other tie-ins for Disney. And the films, because they’re based on stories people actually care about, have restored some of the luster to the Disney brand lost with lackluster derivatives like The Lion King 1 1/2. What’s that worth?

The Pixar acquisition also kept Pixar from going to a competitor. What’s that worth?

While some seem eager to get Pixar to release its own The Lion King 1 1/2…

Richard Greenfield of Pali Research downgraded Disney shares to sell last month, citing a poor outlook for “Up” as a reason. “We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character,” he wrote, adding a complaint about the lack of a female lead.

…it’s reassuring that someone at the company understands the true Disney magic:

John Lasseter, a co-founder of Pixar and now Disney’s chief creative officer, routinely says in interviews that marketability is not a factor in decisions about what projects to pursue. Instead of ideas that feel contemporary, he aims for stories that are rooted in the ages.

“Quality is the best business plan” is one of Mr. Lasseter’s favorite lines.

All software has bugs. When the bugs are complex or difficult to reproduce, it’s understandable that they take time to fix, especially if you want an elegant fix. And sometimes bugs seem trivially easy but prove tricky to fix without introducing undesirable side-effects, or involve cascading changes throughout the code base which, because they may introduce instability, require substantial thought and extensive retesting. This takes time, too.

Good developers will fix those bugs, but it takes time. Users who believe that bugs represent a fundamentally flawed effort by the developer are unreasonable. Developers are human and software is hard.

But.

Some bugs are easy to fix, yet remain unfixed for ages. A new release comes out, you check to see if the bug still persists, and yep, there it is. When you know the bug is easy to fix, this can be annoying. Entire sites exist to document bugs like these.

Like the way Finder scales all icon previews to the selected icon preview size, even if the images are smaller than that size. Look at these three images, all identical except for their size. The image on the right is scaled up to the full 128 pixel height, rendering it unrecognizable. No one wants to see that.

Or the way Finder displays this same quirk in Quick Look. Not terribly useful.

Or the way Calendar displays multiple event alarms, no matter how numerous, in the same little cramped non-resizable window.

Annoys customers, easy to fix. Good candidates for fixing!

    if the icon is taller than it is wide
        set the icon preview width to 128 pixels
        set the icon preview height proportional to the width
    else
        set the icon preview height to 128 pixels
        set the icon preview width proportional to the height
    end

    if image width and height are both less than 128 pixels
        // no need to resize the image, so use existing dimensions
        set the icon preview width to image width
        set the icon preview height to image height
    else if the image is taller than it is wide
        set the icon preview height to 128 pixels
        set the icon preview width proportional to the height
    else
        set the icon preview width to 128 pixels
        set the icon preview height proportional to the width
    end