macvim – Vim for the Mac

When using Mac OS X, I used to use the CLI vim by the excellent Homebrew package manager.

Now I’ve just stumbled over macvim, which is kind of a “deluxe vim” for Mac OS X, including adjusted key bindings for the Mac and a GUI menu, supporting Cocoa file dialogs, among others.

It’s highly recommended if you want to have the best of both the CLI and GUI editor worlds.

Download

Firefox 3 – suggestions for GUI design improvements

Some suggestions for improving the GUI of FF 3:

  • Why does the forward button have a very different shape than the back button (round vs. rectangular)? On IE 7, both have the same shape (round) which is more consistent and more user-friendly (as they’re both navigation icons, just for opposite directions). BTW: Yes, I know the official answer, but the different size is still no excuse for different shapes.
  • Why does FF 3 try to squeeze as much information as possible into the URL text field? Instead of combining the security certificate information with the favicon display (a fact that likely confuses users, particularly Joe Average), one should rather reserve a dedicated place just for displaying the security information (like IE 7 does).
    The star (bookmark??) icon within the text field is also disturbing as it doesn’t behave the way a sane user would expect it to. Instead, clicking on it creates a bookmark (without asking for confirmation), clicking on it again doesn’t just silently remove it again (without asking for confirmation), but rather displays a dialog box with bookmark properties (and another button to remove the bookmark, eventually). Further, the bookmark icon behaves quite different than the analogous magnifier/search icon in the search box.
  • Why isn’t it visually more obvious to the user whether (or not) a connection is properly encrypted and the server properly authenticated through a certificate? Why not use a light-green (or light-yellow) background color (again) for the URL text field of properly secured connections? Instead, all the user is left with now is an almost unnoticeable background color change of the favicon display area and a “secured lock” icon in the status bar. (Note: IE 7 does it better, but only a bit.)
  • Why did they choose blue as the color to indicate a secured connection (the same goes for IE 7)? I’d rather choose green (or maybe yellow, but definitely not blue).
  • Why does the drop-down icon in the URL text field look different than the drop-down icon in the search field (mouse-over tinted vs. permanently tinted)? Only God and the GUI designer know. But it surely confuses users as it isn’t consistent. (BTW, IE 7 is also inconsistent in this regard.)
  • In my view, placing the reload and abort icons after the URL text field (as in IE 7) instead of in front of the URL text field would be more natural.

Easy user navigation on mobile GUIs

Getting mobile UIs right

BTW, I have a rather unconventional (but probably the more interesting) idea how to make user navigation on small, mobile devices (such as mobile phones) much more user-friendly. Particularly in those cases, where current approaches lack the most (e.g. with mobile web browsing). And guess what, it doesn’t even require any new sensors or any other hardware that isn’t there already :) (Contact me, if interested.. ;)