I think I saw this on Digg a few weeks ago…or perhaps somewhere else. Anyway, I think this is a great idea:

Popup Scrollbar Concept Demo

It seems to address some very obvious limitations of scrollbars, I like the little triangle when the “thumb” gets down to 1 pixel, and I like that it’s easier to grab quickly with the mouse without having to very precisely point at the exact right spot. I suspect that GUIs supporting quick gestures are a lot more productive than GUIs requiring super precise pointing and clicking.

I do not have time to work on this, but I wonder if anyone out there is interested in putting together a Swing implementation of this component?

Next question…is this component a new innovation, or is this something that already exists, for instance, in OSX or some other GUI toolkit?

And so it begins. I mentioned some issues with reCAPTCHA, and received a this comment:

Have you tried Asirra?

So I tried it. Here are the results of my usability study:

• The images are really tiny until you hover over them.
• I found it awkward because I really can’t quickly identify the correct images without hovering over each one. It requires too much mouse precision, which slows me down.
• After selecting a few cats, I made the mistake of clicking the “Adopt Me” link, which took me to a different web site.
• When I finally clicked “Score Test”, it told me I’m a bot. (I’m not, unless of course I’m a replicant and simply don’t realize it. Hey…what’s that origami Unicorn doing on my desk?)

I suspect it thinks I’m a bot because I clicked that “Adopt Me” link, making it forget the previous selections.

In summary, this is another CAPTCHA that tries accomplishing a “mission” — adopting pets — which detracts from its usability as a CAPTCHA. In particular, the “Adopt Me” links get in the way.

Holy balls. I had a Twitter account in the past, but I deleted it. (due to being boring and having nothing to write about) Now I decide I’d like to try Twitter again, so I just tried creating a new account.

First, they tell me my Email is already taken. Grr…

So then I click the “forgot” link, enter my Email…and they say:

Oh Snap! We couldn’t find you!

So let me get this straight:

1. According to their database, my Email address is already taken.
2. According to their database, they can’t find my Email address.

Impressive. I blame Rails. (not really, just seems like easy trolling these days…)

I really love the concept of reCAPTCHA, and currently use it on this blog. But I grow weary of this kind of comment:

Also, the captch is super hard to read.. I had to reload 3 times before I got one I could actually make out.

Observation #1

First, people who say this simply do not understand how reCAPTCHA works. One of the words should be legible; the other may or may not be. That’s because one of the two words is taken from some scanned book, and the OCR software could not read it.

People who understand this know they do NOT have to keep hitting reload. Instead, just type your best guess into reCAPTCHA. I’ve left a lot of comments on my own blog, and can only remember a single incident where I had to reload the CAPTCHA. Every other time, even if I couldn’t really read one of the words with confidence, I just typed my best guess and made it right through.

Observation #2

Observation #1 does not matter. It is unrealistic to expect people to research how your CAPTCHA works before they “get it”. I have received a large number of complaints about reCAPTCHA, and it’s making my blog suck. My own blog content is bad enough, now I have to deal with extraneous technical complexity.

This brings me to a larger point about software usability. As technologists, we have deep technical understanding of how our own software works. It is far too easy to get defensive and perhaps even angry at “dumb users” who can’t figure things out. All too often, we are blind to the usability flaws in our own software.

In Summary

reCAPTCHA is a brilliant idea, but fatally flawed. It presents hopelessly garbled text to users who generally don’t really understand what reCAPTCHA is trying to accomplish. Even if I were to include some detailed educational material explaining the concept, most people would not read my explanation. And who could blame them? We’re all overloaded with technical noise.

At this point, reCAPTCHA damages the usability of my blog, as evidenced by numerous comments and complaints from visitors. Explaining how reCAPTCHA works is not my concern. Making my blog easy for people to use — and blocking spammers — are my only concerns.

Sooner or later, when I get around to it, I’ll have to find another solution. That makes me sad, because I’m a big fan of the research behind reCAPTCHA. I really do think it is a great concept, but “not annoying customers” is a bigger concern for most web site owners.

The My Coke Rewards site features one of the worst examples of keyboard navigation I have ever seen. Their Flash GUI is painfully slow, focus jumps randomly from field to field, and it is rife with what appear to be threading bugs. Entering codes from bottle caps starts with this dialog:

I played a bit with this dialog and discovered the following:

• After typing the code, I can click somewhere else in the GUI. Now, when I click in the field again, the cursor jumps to position 0.
• If I use the keyboard to move the cursor to a new location, and then click somewhere with the mouse, the cursor jumps back to the previous location. No matter where I click in the field, after a few moments the cursor mysteriously jumps back to the old location.
• I hit Tab once, and nothing happened. Hit Tab again, and focus moved to the Done button. Wait a moment, and Done loses focus. Now I cannot see which field has focus.
• Click in the code field again. Now the cursor again jumps to position 0, NOT where I clicked. Press Tab once and all of the text in the field is selected, hit Tab again and focus jumps to the Submit button. After less than a second, Submit loses focus.
• Now I click in the code field and start hitting Tab. The focus order appears completely random if I keep hitting Tab: Help, “nothing”, “Select All”, Submit, Help, Help, Done, “Select All”, etc. It is complete nonsense, hard to explain without showing a video of some sort. It just randomly jumps from field to field.
• After all this tabbing, now Submit doesn’t even work. But if I click Submit again, it accepts my code and grants 3 points. But wait…the code is still there. So I submit again, and get another 3 points. But several seconds later, an error dialog appears.

This is a huge company with nearly unlimited resources. This site is the centerpiece of a hugely expensive ad campaign. Yet…they can’t even make fundamental keyboard navigation work. These are not subtle bugs, either. They aren’t even close to correct.

I don’t get it.

This dialog keeps popping up:

I can think of an improvement:

Respect your customers by giving them the opportunity to say “No thanks”.