"Nerd Whores"

"She's a nerdwhore."
"She's not really a nerd..."
"I like that you're quibbling over whether she's a nerd and not whether she's a whore."

Losing Privacy

I'm having a bit of a rude awakening about the value of being open on the web. Twice in the last two weeks I've had people stalk me for various reasons, finding all of my accounts (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, my Blog, etc.) and learning more information about me (some of it inexplicable) than I'm personally comfortable with. I try to exercise a good amount of discretion with what I post on the net, particularly on my blogs, Twitter account, and Facebook. But even small slip-ups are being caught by ever-watchful eyes: the eyes of people I don't even know in some cases!

It's actually pretty frightening.

I've had my Facebook protected for some time now, and I guess now all my Twitter updates need to be protected. I really don't like the idea, but the alternative is much worse (especially since it has hurt not only me but someone I care deeply for). Right now, I just feel like shutting off from the world.

Back for Round 2: More Thoughts on Firefox 4.0

All of the mockups for Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 have gotten me thinking about UI and the usability of said interfaces, which is not something I ordinarily do. But the amount of debate over the merits of the redesign on sites like Mashable and Lifehacker kept the design concepts on my mind. Just what is Mozilla trying to accomplish with these UI redesigns and are they even needed in some cases. That's what I'm here to explore today.

RIP Menu Bar; You won't be missed.

Mozilla's decision to completely eliminate the need for the menu bar is something I've personally been hoping for. Although I detested the idea when trying out Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) originally, I've quickly grown fond of the idea of consolidating menus into a couple of buttons on the Navigation toolbar. Chrome does it. Safari 4 does it. And thanks to the Personal Menu extension, Firefox can do it too. Having that feature built into the browser though would be preferable, since I and other users wouldn't be left with a broken extension next time a new Firefox version is released. Ideally, the Firefox approach would somewhat mirror those of it's competitors: with the "Page" button containing functions from the "File," "Edit," and "View" menus, "Tools" combining "Tools," "Help," and maybe the "History" menus, and "Bookmarks" getting its own dedicated button.

While some have questioned the logic of removing the Menu bar by default, I welcome it. For too long, the menu bar has wasted precious vertical screen real estate that could be dedicated to viewing webpages. The amount of horizontal space needed for these menus does not justify its space, and should therefore be eliminated.

Removing Elements from the Navigation Bar: Why?

This proposal confuses me: if the goal of the redesign is to consolidate the vertical space used by the browser UI elements, then why are elements the only use horizontal space also being eliminated. For instance, the designs for Firefox 4.0 show that the search bar, bookmarks button, and stop/refresh buttons have been completely removed from the UI. With widescreen monitors being so prevalent, are such removals really necessary? My Address bar is currently to largest horizontal element in Firefox by a wide margin, and that's with all the navigation buttons, search bar, and Personal Menu buttons. Especially with the search bar and bookmarks menu, their removal from the Firefox UI would completely disrupt my workflow. From the current concepts, I know the Firefox team has ideas in mind, but I hope they aren't catering to the super power users (which I am not).

On the bright side, I know that Firefox will always be highly customizable, and that I'll probably be able to add all these UI elements without the need of extensions; however, I fear that the drastic changes, if enabled by default, will turn off many of the less tech-savvy Firefox users.

Bookmarks: Finding the Right Approach

Bookmarks are a very important aspect of my browsing habits. So important, in fact, that it's the main reason why I never made the switch to Google Chrome when so many of my friends (including my roommate) did. With every new browser release (Chrome, Safari 4, IE8), I test them out to see how they compare, and everytime I find myself unable to cope with their approach to bookmarks. Chrome, a browser which prides itself on how little vertical screen space its UI uses, relies on the bookmarks bar like a crutch. This approach uses needless vertical space and visual clutter. But as much as I dislike the Chrome approach, Safari's is even worse. Safari also relies on the bookmarks bar, but instead of using a dropdown menu for saved bookmarks, Safari hijacks the current tab to display saved bookmarks. The design of this bookmark database is very reminiscent of iTunes, with a left sidebar and coverflow view of bookmarks dominating the UI. Not only is the change disorienting, but if you exit out of the bookmarks menus, the tab it hijacked has to reload fully (doing this on YouTube pages is particularly annoying).

Interestingly enough, IE8 has the best approach among the non-Firefox browsers I tested. Microsoft added a "Favorites" button on the left side of the tab bar, which brings up a dropdown menu of your bookmarks, very much like the Personal Menu approach. There's also the option in this dropdown to make the menu a sidebar (which is another approach I dislike because it reorients the page in the browser). The only downside is that it's part of the tab bar and not the navigation bar, which brings me very nicely to my next point...

The Tab Bar: Don't Clutter It Up!

The tab bar is perhaps the most important element in modern web browsers. It's what got many of use to switch to Firefox (or Opera) originally. For the most part, the Firefox team has seen fit not to mess too much with the tab bar, aside from a few tweaks like the New Tab button and the ability to horizontally scroll through tabs when there are too many open to be displayed. Aesthetically, this has kept the tab bar from becoming cluttered, especially when compared to a browser like Internet Explorer 8. In addition to in dividual tabs and the New Tab button, IE8 has placed the "Favorites," "Home," "Print," "Page," "Security," and "Tools" buttons all on the tab bar, creating an access of visual clutter. This also limits the amount of horizontal space which can be devoted to open tabs.

Some of the proposed design choices for Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 threaten to do the same thing to the open source browser's tab bar. The most egregious of these changes is the addition of the "Page" tab/button on the far left of the tab bar, as seen in the mockups for Firefox 3.7 and the "tabs-on-bottom" design of 4.0. Ignoring the aesthetically unattractiveness of this design, adding such a button to the tab bar wastes precious tab space. The aim of this design supposedly to help users associate the options of the "Page" menu with the currently open tab, but this seems like a silly rationale personally. Much like in word processing, we've come to associate a function like "Print" with the elements (be they documents or webpages) currently displayed on our screens. There's no reason why this menu couldn't be placed on the navigation bar, as other design mockups have shown.

The other design choice the UI team have proposed is making the "Home" button into a small tab on the far left of the tab bar. I'm neutral on this idea. I can see a reason for placing the "Home" function on the tab bar, since (much like the New Tab button) it's related to a users tabs; however, I'd need to know how the tab would function before I'm sold. In a perfect world, it would operate much like the new tab button, opening up your home page(s) next to the button, rather than hijacking the currently open tab (as it does now).

Conclusions

So what does all this ramblings about design mean? Well, if I were to give advice to the Firefox UI team today, I would suggest the following:

Give options to the power users, but cater to the casual browser

Implementing features like Taskfox may eventually be great for all users, but making it the default for searching the web (rather than the traditional search bar) is unlikely to be highly discoverable for users and will likely break workflows (including my own). These are for the power users, and should be an option, rather than the default.

Keep it customizable

One of the best things about Firefox's current UI is how customizable it is for those who want to change it. Rearranging, adding, and removing elements to the navigation bar (among other places) has always been available and simple to perform, and should remain so for these future designs. Not only that, but users should have the option of removing or replacing any of these new UI changes that they don't personally like, such as tabs-on-top vs. tabs-on-bottom, the Home tab, and the menu bar. Not only that, but...


Keep it familiar by default

Don't remove the search bar or stop/refresh buttons from the UI by default. These are elements that many of use are familiar with and use daily as part of our browsing behavior. Removing them has the potential of alienating less tech-savvy users. If a user doesn't need/want a UI element, that's where personal customization comes in.

Mozilla: I hope you're listening.

Firefox 4.0 Mockups

I'm usually really excited whenever there's announcements about an upcoming version of Firefox; I am a self-proclaimed browser zealot and Firefox evangelizer after all (still haven't converted my girlfriend though). Recently though, the Firefox UI team have been releasing screenshots of mockups for the upcoming versions of my favorite browser. First it was the Firefox 3.7 mockups last week, and now the team has shown their proposed ideas for Firefox 4.0.

Although I'm happy to see the developers experimenting and looking for ways to improve the Firefox browsing experience, some of the proposals don't sit too well with me. Namely, in the above "Tabs on Bottom" approach, the tab bar itself looks like it will become quite cluttered. Page options tab and a Home tab in addition to individual page tabs and the new tab button: it all becomes a bit cluttered for my taste. I do however like the elimination of the menu bar in favor of a couple buttons. I already do this thanks to an extension called Personal Menu.

Then of course, there's the possibility of placing the tab on the top on the screen, a la Google Chrome or the original Safari 4.0 builds. While I don't personally favor this approach because of my current computing habits at home, I like the look of this mockup more overall. The Tab bar is less cluttered and the design has more flow. My only concern is the lack of Bookmarks button and search bar: two UI elements I use most frequently.

Thankfully, from comments by Alexander Limi in the above Mashable article (as well as an article concerning tabs on his blog), the Firefox team is hoping to let users customize the interface to suit them, and if that's the case I'll be happy. None of these mockups completely satisfy me, and I'd rather not use 10 different extensions and themes to get an acceptable UI.

In conclusion:

Things I like
- Eliminating the menu bar
- consolidating menus into "page," "bookmark," and "tools" buttons

Things I don't like
- Page button on the tab bar
- Home button on the tab bar
- Missing search bar
- Missing bookmarks button in some mockups

Things I'm neutral on
- Combined Stop/Refresh/Go button
- New progress indicator
- Tabs on top (although I currently prefer the Tabs on bottom approach)

Some Thoughts on Dancing

If I've learned only one thing In the 10 months since I started dancing, it's this: play to your strengths. I've learned the basic steps (and then some) for over a dozen different social dances, and each style has its own quirks that make it good or bad for a particular person. Dances like Rhumba and Bolero, for instance, don't really fit me because they're too slow for my taste; and while I enjoy the Latin dances like Salsa and Merengue, they require a persona that I really don't have. I've been told (and I like to believe) that I'm a pretty good lead in all of these dances, but I'm well aware that these quirks would eventually act as a barrier against becoming a really talented lead in that particular dance.

This is why I always felt that Hustle was such a good fit for me. I never really found an aspect of the dance that caused any sort of hindrance to my progression. As a result, I'm a damn good Hustle lead considering how long I've been dancing. It doesn't hurt that I love the music either. The only problem with the dance is that I feel like the potential moveset is limited, as even watching really good hustle dancers doesn't show me more than a dozen possible moves I can still learn.

And then there's Swing / Lindy Hop. East Coast Swing was the first dance I ever learned, and like Hustle I'm a more than decent lead at it. But also like Hustle, I've been starting to feel like I'm near the limit for moves to learn. Recently, I've started learning Lindy Hop because I wanted to be challenged and learn a new dance for Swing venues. However, both the structure of the dance and the attitudes of some of the dancers having me less than enthralled. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they're like a brick wall keeping me from really enjoying the dance for extended periods of time. I'm going to keep learning and dancing Lindy Hop, but the more I dance the more I feel like it isn't really the dance for me.



Which brings me to West Coast Swing, the official dance of my home state (California). Whenever I watch dancers like the ones in the video above, I can't help but be entranced. The music; the movements; everything about the dance appeals to me. So, much to the dismay (I'm sure) of some of my Lindy Hop friends, I think that West Coast Swing may be the dance for me. I know the basics already and will be trying to learn more before school starts up again.

When I originally conceived of this post, it was about narrowing my dance focus. And the more I watch these videos and practice the movements, the more I feel like West Coast Swing should be my dance area of concentration. I'm still gonna dance Swing/Lindy, Salsa, Cha Cha, Tango, and all the other dances I know, but this is the one I'm going but to majority of my effort towards.

Jeff and Katherine's Birthday Extravaganza!

My friend Katherine and I both have our birthdays in August, separated by a mere week; my birthday is August 14th while hers is August 21. So together we hatched a plan: combine our birthday into one giant celebration that will cause the world to stand up and take notice of our respective awesomeness. For 10 days, we'll do nothing but dance, party, eat copious amounts of cake and ice cream, dance, force our friends to entertain us, and did I mention dance?

I just got the time off approved at work, so I'm more than a little excited!

So citizens of the world: prepare yourself! This August 14-23 will be one to remember. Mark your calendars (and if you're our Facebook friends, be on the lookout for event invitations).

FYI: I Have Amazing Conversations

Sometimes my conversational talents wow even myself! I spent my lunch break hanging out with one of my coworkers and the topics of conversation really ran the gamut. We talked about some pretty off-the-wall stuff. Though I'm starting to wonder whether I'm not secretly insane and no one has ever bothered to tell me. Oh well. Here are the highlights for your reading pleasure:

• Real vs. Planned Spontanaity
• Watching the movies "He's Just Not That Into You" and "Mama Mia" back to back would apparently mandate revokation of my "Straight Card"
• "The Best romantic comedies are like pancakes: lots of syrup with a little bit of fruit"
• I imagine all web marketing people as sounding like "pseudo-homosexuals" if you don't use buzz words correctly ("Excuse me, it's Web two-point-oh, not web two-dot-oh").
• I may start scripting all conversation prior to a date to ensure that it is suitably whitty and without awkward silences
• Not just my lines either; my date will have her own script
• Nazi Zombies
• Die Hard = Best Christmas Movie Ever!
• They should make a sequel to True Lies titled "True Lies: Even More Lies"
• The Perry Bible Fellowship
• It would be interesting to watch "The Lion King" in African "click language"
  

I hope you're enjoyed this short trip into my often strange mind. ^_^