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the art of experience design y creative thinking

Mashable author Stan Schroeder wrote about Firefox, the software which is right now absorbing 40% of my CPU performance and using 1 GB of total 2 GB of RAM. This is not just another software we are using, this is the “thing” that we are using most of the time when we are using our computers (for the ones using Firefox as their web browser).

Like Stan, I am also using Gmail for emails, Google Calendar, Vitalist, a web-based RSS Reader and so on… %90 of my computer-based activities are on the web and by so I need a web browser to navigate among them. That is Firefox for me, that is still Mozilla Firefox and I have lots of tabs open on it right now.

I really don’t remember the exact date when I moved to Firefox, but I definitely remember why I moved to. I moved to it, because;

1. it was faster (now there is Opera),
2. it was using low memory (less memory than Internet Explorer),
3. it was stable,
4. it was safer (at least, we believed in, but it seems not),
5. it had many extensions (which made the life easier for me),
6. it had tabs,
7. it was free,
8. it was open-source,
9. it was dissentient,
10. …

For me, the most important items of this list were 1, 2 and 3 1, 2, 3 and 5. For me, these three four were the main sources of real positive experience of Firefox.

1. Now, I am waiting for a tab to open for a minute 15 seconds to a minute, let’s don’t talk about the time needed for Firefox to open.
2. It is right now absorbing 40% of my CPU performance and using 1 GB of total 2 GB of RAM.
3. It crashes all the time more than it should be (mostly because of high-level memory and CPU usage).
4. .
5. I am now using more extensions (23 in total) than I was using and life is even easier, no problem with this.

You can read more about other items here, however, I really don’t care about the rest.

Having read the post of Stan, and gone through the comments left there, it seems that there are lots of high-level expectations from Firefox version 3 which is still in Beta. This step can be a milestone for Mozilla. We are on the edge of changing our minds. People are talking about returning back to Internet Explorer and I am thinking of moving to Opera permanently (Now I am an eager user of Opera and I am using it when Firefox is not responding (and this happens usually)).

Firefox had a successful story (which was full of myths) and a better user experience by providing innovations (like tabs, third party add-ons) resulting better overall performance around this successful story. Mozilla played well to combine all these together to build a successful brand experience.

Now there is this contradictory apparent truth: I am not able to experience Firefox as positive as I was able to. Actually, I am not experiencing it positively anymore. I don’t feel comfortable with it. I don’t feel better when I double-click the icon of Mozilla Firefox.

We are using more of the web, less of the desktop and the gap is growing each day. Microsoft is aware of the painful truth. Is Mozilla really aware of the appealing truth? Is Mozilla really aware of that version 3 may be a last chance for them?

Continue reading “Yes I am, Stan. Me too. Deeply frustrated with Firefox.” »

I first realized the awful fact when I tried to access my Google Reader. After closing Safari, and opening back again for newly coming feeds, Safari asked me for the username and password again. I have checked the “remember” option once again, but the same thing happened once more.

It was totally an intolerable situation besides the perfect web surfing experience from a mobile device that iPhone providing.

So I directly went Google through as you can predict, however I could only find complaints but not a solution. So I started to think about possible causes for me to experience iPhone even worse than my previous device, Treo 680.

It had to be because of cookies, since it behaves like I didn’t check “remember login information” field of Google or any other login page.

Anyway, the idea came after when I was in bathroom (this was the lightening point), there was a problem in creating cookies. So I checked for cookie’s folder permissions, bingo!

Here is a 9 step easy to follow solution for your iPhone Safari to save your passwords (remember login info) as it should be:

1. First, go to Installer on your iPhone, list all packages, find “BSD Subsystem” and install it.

2. After restart, go to Installer again, now find “Mobile Finder” and install it.

3. When these are OK, start Mobile Finder, click on the “~” button from upper left.

4. You will see “Library” folder there, click twice and open it.

5. There you will see “Cookies” folder, click once, and when it is selected, click “Modify” button from the center of the bottom menu.

6. You will see a screen LIKE THIS (not exactly this one, this is just another screen shot from Mobile Finder):

Here you should click on all “Read, Write, Exec” buttons until all 9 be blue.

7. Click “Done” and return back the previous screen. Now click on Cookies again to see inside of the folder.

8. In Cookies folder, modify all the files (normally there should be only one named “Cookies.plist”) like step 6, however only making all “Read, Write” blue. It means that there will be 6 blues, not “Exec” buttons.

9. Click “Done” and after restarting Safari, it is now remembering your passwords.

Enjoy your iPhone with the best mobile user experience of all the time!

P.S.: If you are an expert user and using ssh to connect to your iPhone, CHMOD 777 /var/mobile/Library/Cookies and CHMOD 666 -R /var/mobile/Library/Cookies/*.

Continue reading “iPhone Safari doesn’t remember passwords, yep I know” »

…at least there should be elegant offers like

all around the web, shouldn’t be?..

P.S.: It knows (by a cookie of course) that I have seen “Ankara, TU” page before, however, it doesn’t come up with that page or that page in a portion of the main page or with a pop-up (these and more are all possible with that cookie). It comes up with an elegant offer when I just click on the search box. This is nice, because I want to search it and I am always searching it. I know that I can have a personalized main page for free, but, I just want to search, I want it, let me do that. It lets me do that. Thanks to weather.com, they have also other very good applications which show respect to user’s choices (or the ways how user wants to experience), I will write down them later if I can.

Continue reading “Before semantic search…” »

Web 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and counting..

There is a strong competition on naming the future of the web. However, the content should be more important than this, what I mean is “experience.”

For instance; when I am typing this little shot on semantic web, on the top-right of my screen, my browser should show me some different definitions and some opinions having top hits, which are all about Semantic Web.

Is this enough? Nope, of course, my browser or any other agent on my computer should also offer me to search Google with keywords about Semantic Web that I haven’t think of them before. Bottom-right of the screen is OK for this.

Stop here? Come on, what about recently published books about Semantic Web? On the top-left of my screen, the agent should offer me to buy them from stores having discounts. If I agree, it should complete all process with information that it already has.

What about the bottom-left?

Continue reading “A Shot on Semantic Web” »

*I act therefore I construct.

What are you waiting for?

Continue reading “Ago Ergo Erigo*” »

A user’s experience of a web site is strictly related to knowing your visitor’s needs. Your visitor can’t talk, you can’t just listen to him/her and you can’t simply go ahead with this information. You have to know how your visitor feel, how s/he behaves.

Your visitor is like your baby, s/he can’t talk, s/he just wants something and s/he is there just for his/her aim. If you know your baby very well, you can answer his/her questions by delivering what s/he is asking for. Otherwise, s/he immediately starts to cry.

What I mean by crying here is your visitor simply navigates to another site. The only difference between your visitor and your baby is this. Your visitor has an ability to leave you whenever s/he can’t get what s/he is looking for. Immediately!

Know your visitors well, start from asking a simple question:
Why is your visitor there? What is s/he expecting to find?

Continue reading “What is User Experience?” »