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• Resizable dialogs are important, especially when you have any scrollbars.

  If a dialog has scrollbars, it should also be resizable and save the last size & location it was given. Windows Vista's wireless network dialog below is not resizable, yet it often has more entries than I can see at one time. Wouldn't it just be easier if everybody could use the <Grid> element... [Good morning today...went running and took the bus to work.] Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 11, 2007 11:39 AM from Rob Relyea | 0 Comments Filed under: Software Should

• Software should adapt to the size/aspect ratio that the user gives to the application

  A couple of fun games built on Silverlight: 1) ZeroGravity: http://ltbennet.com 2) Destroy All: http://andybeaulieu.com/silverlight/DestroyAll/ (I like how you can play the game using images from Virtual Earth!) Notice that they take very different approaches to sizing. ZeroGravity takes all available space based on the size that the user gives the browser window. DestroyAll has a fixed size...which looks really lame on my 1600x1200 monitor. Read More... Posted Friday, June 29, 2007 12:09 PM from Rob Relyea | 0 Comments Filed under: Software Should

• Software should improve by fixing crash reports from users

  Guideline: Software should use a feedback loop to fix problems that customers are running into. If you make Windows software (including a WPF application or xbap), you can get crash reports that consumers submit through Windows. Seems like the requirements are that you have a VeriSign ID (also called a Software Publisher's Digital ID for Authenticode). The winqual.microsoft.com site has the following details: Windows Error Reporting (WER) and Crash Data WER is a set of technologies built into Microsoft Windows XP and the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system that captures product crash data and makes it possible for end-users to report the information. Software and hardware vendors can then analyze and respond to these problems. With WER and Microsoft Windows Update, you can identify problems and provide solutions. WER: Getting Started How WER Helps Customers How WER Works How WER Collects and Classifies Error Reports For searchability: Watson Crash Dump Good Reading for Microsoft Read More... Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 6:31 PM from Rob Relyea | 0 Comments Filed under: Software Should

• HDView Comparisons

  JD (of Adobe) doesn't like that MS Research's HDView project ( that I pointed to the other day ) runs in IE only. He points to Hal9000 , a Flash app, that is also rendering mega-zoomable experiences. My usability thoughts: HDView: resizing the browser window will resize the size of the picture, not so for the Hal9000 solution...it seems to like ~800 x 600 HDView: the scroll wheel works...and has a smooth transition, Hal9000solution doesn't. Hal9000: clicking on a place in the photo zooms in (but with no transition effect). Both: escape key works the same on both...zooms you all the way out. Like that. HDView: has a nice feature to remember the URL of a specific view. [update: ok, forgot about this...but I just reran Hal9000] Hal9000: loud intro with the "skip" offer...I couldn't hit skip and sound off fast enough! What I think works best for these kind of things is: 1) information publishers should publish in open formats, instead of locking people into only one front end or web Read More... Posted Saturday, March 10, 2007 9:32 AM from Rob Relyea | 0 Comments Filed under: Software Should

• Software Feedback: Using Ricciolo PaperBoy 0.2 (WPF RSS Reader)

  I noticed a new RSS reader called Ricciolo PaperBoy on the WPF Application list a few days ago. (I link to that applist at the top left of my blog: rrelyea.spaces.live.com ...in case you forget the applist url) It is a codeplex project. This morning I'm doing my RSS reading in it and keeping track of my opinions. My experience with RSS readers is not deep: The first reader I used was newsgator, which was integrated with Outlook. I liked the ability to easily forward posts to my coworkers. I now use IE's RSS functionality and do my RSS reading along with my web surfing. Will somebody build an experience that is rich enough to get me to have a dedicated app or xbap...I think so, but lets see how it develops. Giving my feedback will make it more likely. Impressions Opportunity: the first time I ran this v0.2 project, i was getting several runtime exceptions. (today I haven't hit them at all. - Spoke too soon...I got some when I view certain posts...like mine.) Nice: When I was getting those Read More... Posted Saturday, March 10, 2007 8:54 AM from Rob Relyea | 0 Comments Filed under: Software Should

• All blog renderings should be easily referable: Title w/ Link

  Windows Live Spaces and many other blog sites should make the blog title be a hyperlink, so that it is simple to refer to a blog post. It was easy on Tim's site: Great WPF Applications #10: Daily Mail, Seattle P-I, forbes.com, New York Times [note: I just noticed that Tim's site (blogs.msdn.com) has those nice links when you look at several posts at one time ( http://blogs.msdn.com/tims ), but doesn't have that nice link when you go to see one post.] On my blog, currently hosted on Windows Live Spaces, I generally need to do several steps: If not viewing a post specific URL, click on Permalink at the bottom of the post. Copy Title and paste it to destination Copy Url from Address bar Select title in destination, press ctrl-k, paste in URL Aaaaggghhh! Has anybody wrote a set of guidelines for blog post renderings yet? Read More... Posted Sunday, February 25, 2007 8:27 AM from Rob Relyea | 0 Comments Filed under: Software Should

• Software Should Be Secure, Authenticated, Reliable, etc...

  Windows Vista has some great capabilities that will help you build Quality Applications . Read More... Posted Friday, September 08, 2006 3:14 PM from Rob Relyea | 0 Comments Filed under: Software Should

• Software Should Remember UserSettings - does yours?

  I'm curious how most developers out there are currently saving user settings in WPF, WinForms, other? Read More... Posted Wednesday, September 06, 2006 10:00 AM from Rob Relyea | 0 Comments Filed under: Software Should