Don’t hide or disable menu items? I disagree.

Joel Spolsky recently wrote a post on his blog making a case against disabling menu items. Here is the gist of his argument…
“Users see the disabled menu item that they want to click on, and are left entirely without a clue of what they are supposed to do to get the menu item to work.”
As [...]

Comparison of Go buttons

Ok, the next button I want to look at is the Go button. First of all, in my opinion, every interface should have a Go button. I wish my microwave had one-just put my food in and press Go.
As with the Refresh/Reload buttons, I will be considering three attributes of the button’s glyphs to determine [...]

Comparison of Refresh/Reload buttons

I am going to have several posts, which document and examine common button standards within electronic interfaces. In part for prosperity, but also as an exercise for my own benefit. The first one I want to look at is the “Refresh/Reload” button.
To me, buttons (apart from text) should have three qualities to maximize usability.

Appropriate size
Intuitive [...]

Ancestry.com has navigation issues

I’ve recently discovered Ancestry.com. What an addicting past time it’s become for me. For those who don’t know, Ancestry.com is a website which provides tools and services for building and researching a family tree.
The tools and services the site provides are very good. For instance, every time a change is made to your tree, the [...]