<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!-- generator="WordPress/2.9.1" -->
<rss version="0.92">
<channel>
	<title>Confessions of a User Experience Junkie</title>
	<link>http://rick.icons.cx</link>
	<description>Rick Roe's Weblog</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:33:03 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>
	<language>en</language>
	
	<item>
		<title>Safari 4: &#8220;Delicious&#8221;?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Heh. &#8220;Perhaps I’ll get back into the swing of things soon,&#8221; I said in the last post&#8230; two and a half years ago. I guess I&#8217;ve just been reluctant to publicly talk the talk about UE issues when I haven&#8217;t been publicly walking the walk lately. (Yes, I need to stop tinkering and start releasing, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2009/03/04/safari-4-delicious/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Back from the dead.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Whoa, I have a blog? I almost forgot&#8230; It&#8217;s been an interesting couple of years since I last wrote, but perhaps I&#8217;ll get back into the swing of things soon.

For now, I&#8217;ve migrated the old blog content onto a new Wordpress 2.0 install, which of course comes with a change of theme. (Which may change some [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2006/08/31/back-from-the-dead/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Good, the Bad, and the Tog: Efficiency Isn&#8217;t Everything.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;ve mentioned this here (or in any of the other public forums for my thoughts on UE) before, but I have this general skepticism towards many of the so-called luminaries in my field. There&#8217;s the academic HCI experts whose research is of little use outside of their ivory towers, the web [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2004/01/19/the-good-the-bad-and-the-tog-efficiency-isnt-everything/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Yes, I&#8217;m alive. (Also: Bluetooth Rocks!)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yeah&#8230; so I haven&#8217;t posted in a while, huh? How I managed to be deprived of opportunities and/or motivation to write in this journal for the last six months or so is a long story, perhaps for another time.   Suffice to say that my professional and personal lives are now (finally) back in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2004/01/14/yes-im-alive-also-bluetooth-rocks/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Direct Manipulation and Drag &amp; Drop</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Apple&#8217;s Human Interface Guidelines have long embraced the principle of direct manipulation: when the user handles the icons/text/etc on the screen, she should feel she&#8217;s &#8220;really&#8221; handling the objects they represent. This concept dovetails with that of perceived stability: The onscreen environment should behave as though it conforms to a set of predictable, understandable rules; [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/05/05/direct-manipulation-and-drag-drop/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Oooo, spiffy.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In lieu of a new entry this weekend, we have a new stylesheet. Feedback is welcome, though I&#8217;ll probably be tweaking it a bit (and adding a few alternate stylesheets) in the days to come. (Quite welcome, actually&#8230; this is my first attempt at this complex a CSS-only layout.) Oh, and if you like the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/04/20/oooo-spiffy/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Alphabet According to Google</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Somebody noticed recently that the top result for a Google search on the letter &#8220;A&#8221; is www.apple.com, and then Rael noticed recently that the same is true for &#8220;O&#8221; and www.oreilly.com. From there, we get this interesting variation of a  Zeitgeist:


  A B C D E F G H I J K L [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/04/13/the-alphabet-according-to-google/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>App organization and Disk Images</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One of my favorite things about OS X is how Apple and the developer community have found a way to do application packaging and distribution that encourages good organization. Application &#8220;bundles&#8221; and disk images solve (or at least improve on) a bunch of problems we had on OS 9 in a way most of us [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/04/05/app-organization-and-disk-images/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>New title. Cheesy? Yup.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[But at least it&#8217;s unique. Well, probably unique, according to some quick Googling.

Speaking of which, my title uniqueness search turned up somebody else&#8217;s comments on Apple&#8217;s Find File functionality &#8212; its author pines for the BeOS search interface of old, where search result windows were exactly like folder windows and could be saved as folder-like [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/04/05/new-title-cheesy-yup/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Designing for the silent majority.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Apple&#8217;s tech writers have done a pretty good job so far of rewriting the Human Interface Guidelines for Mac OS X. Instead of yet another addendum to the original (leaving us wondering which older parts are obsolete and which not), the Aqua HIG incorporates many of the universal recommendations of the original while replacing all [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/04/03/designing-for-the-silent-majority/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>What were you thinking, Apple?!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yeah, so it&#8217;s again been awhile since I updated this blog. I&#8217;ve been composing what&#8217;s becoming a long essay on software installation/distribution methods&#8230; probably gotta cut it down a bit, but first I have to finish it  

But I couldn&#8217;t help but notice how crazy the installation scheme for one of Apple&#8217;s latest software [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/03/21/what-were-you-thinking-apple/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Forcing Decisions vs. Allowing Choice</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Okay, here&#8217;s a quick one on design principles for the impatient readers out there. : )  Actually, it&#8217;s just one design principle. But it&#8217;s a pretty important one.

When you present the user with a choice, you force them to make a decision. Choices are generally good, but forcing decisions is bad. And the more [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/03/02/forcing-decisions-vs-allowing-choice/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Time for a better name, I guess</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Okay, someone pointed out today that I haven&#8217;t updated this weblog in a while. Heck, I didn&#8217;t know anyone was reading it!   Anyhow, dearest apologies to my readers&#8230; there&#8217;ll be another meaty update soon. (And a vegan update, too, I guess.)

Actually, I discovered not long after my last update that there&#8217;s more than [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/03/02/time-for-a-better-name-i-guess/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Alert panels: Read the HIG, not the headers.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Okay, here&#8217;s a quick one for the Cocoa folks in the audience. We&#8217;ve got this nice convenient function (and several others based on it) for throwing up an alert panel:


  NSRunAlertPanel(NSString *title, NSString *msg, NSString *defaultButton, NSString *alternateButton, NSString *otherButton, ...);


Back on NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, the first argument was supposed to be a short title (one [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/02/13/alert-panels-read-the-hig-not-the-headers/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Is it okay to &quot;borrow&quot; toolbar icons?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Must be a common problem&#8230; I&#8217;ve been asked this a few times now. Most recently at MacNN Forums:


  So there&#8217;s lots of webspace devoted to application icons, for end users, but my searching has left me empty-handed over where to get good toolbar icons for my app development. Am I going to have to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/02/09/is-it-okay-to-borrow-toolbar-icons/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>So who is this yahoo, anyway?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just in case you&#8217;ve found this blog without knowing anything about me (in which case, why are you reading?), I should probably drop a bit of background information for you. Seems like a good way to formally start a blog&#8230;

So, um, yeah&#8230;

Hi, I&#8217;m Rick. For the past four years or so, I&#8217;ve had the privilege [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/02/05/so-who-is-this-yahoo-anyway/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>This&#8217;ll do for now.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Okay, PHPosxom 0.6b1 is up and running, and this blog has a bit of a style to it. Still needs some whacking with a pretty stick, and I&#8217;ll have to find a place for that little logo I like to stick on my personal stuff, but it&#8217;ll do for now, but it&#8217;s not bad for [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/02/05/thisll-do-for-now/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Testing, 1, 2, 3&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Testing an update to PHPosxom 0.6b1.

By the way, the author system doesn&#8217;t work. README says if it&#8217;s off, the second line of the file is the first line of the entry. Well, it&#8217;s not. :p
]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/02/04/testing-1-2-3/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Surprise! Rick jumps on the blog bandwagon.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve never been much for these &#8220;blogs&#8221;&#8230; I&#8217;ve no interest in reading other people&#8217;s diaries, and have always thought keeping one is rather silly. I never got the point of &#8220;journaling&#8221; in my high school English classes&#8230; found it a waste of time, really. And especially the name the world has settled on for this [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://rick.icons.cx/2003/02/02/surprise-rick-jumps-on-the-blog-bandwagon/</link>
			</item>
</channel>
</rss>
