Pop Art Blog

I love Southwest Airlines. In a time when nearly every other airline is bankrupting themselves, exacerbating their problems with underhanded pricing, starving their customers, and providing Soviet-era customer service, Southwest is expanding their offerings in their typical friendly, easygoing way. If you've never flown Southwest, try it sometime. It takes a bit of getting used to, what with the un-assigned seating, friendly, sometimes comedic employees and general low-key atmosphere, but I think... Read More...

One major annoyance between the Mac and PC versions of Firefox 3 is the position of the “Done” button on the Add Bookmark dialog. On a Mac, the button is on the right. On a PC, it’s on the left. I won’t comment on which is better, just that the difference breaks my muscle memory and is driving me up the wall, and causing me to lose bookmarks that I think I’ve saved. The only saving grace here is that “Done” is the default action on both, so what I really... Read More...

When we first moved into our new building, Dave wrote "Door-Close button in elevator does nothing" on the maintenance list, and the handyman replied "Button functions as intended" or something along those lines. Well, turns out they're BOTH right. I was reading an article that Kottke linked to about elevators, and there was a little bit in there about how the door close buttons don't do anything in modern elevators! "In most elevators, at least in any built or installed... Read More...

Raymond from The Old New Thing has written a great article to remind us that " The Default Answer to Every Dialog Box is 'Cancel' ." He includes many examples, but what it boils down to is that average users are frequently intimidated by dialog boxes, and if given the choice, will avoid them. The solution is to clarify your messages as much as possible. For instance, in a dialog box asking if the user wants to save their document, Microsoft will present two buttons, labelled "Yes"... Read More...