Membranophonist's Ramblings

Interaction and interface design, technology, politics, music, and random thoughts…

January 19, 2009
1 Comment

Tomorrow is the Question

Rescheduling an event to another day using the mobile Calendar app on the iPhone requires at least six taps across four screens. The method depicted below reduces the minimum taps to two with the number of screens depending on how …

November 20, 2008
0 comments

Scroll for Whole

In the Now Playing table view, I’d like the total length of the album displayed in a hidden row that only appears when scrolling beyond the track rows:

After releasing the screen, the total row is hidden again.…

November 9, 2008
3 Comments

Tap to Map

Unlike addresses displayed in contacts’ details, locations added to calendar events cannot be tapped to display a map of the location.

The current event details screen:

Slightly tweaked to indicate the location is actionable:

Location field input is not structured, …

October 29, 2008
1 Comment

No Comments

Being a musician and big proponent of metadata, I frequently add musician credits in the Comments field of music tracks. Like lyrics, comments could be displayed atop the album cover image in the Now Playing view.

…

October 18, 2008
0 comments

My Current Space is the Place

I want to be able to add contacts, events, and tasks to Contactizer Pro without having to move to its space (virtual desktop), open a New Thing window, then move the New Thing window to the space displaying the information …

September 7, 2008
4 Comments

iPhone Power Settings

Mike Davidson posted a critique of the number of steps required to change battery life-extending settings on the iPhone. Off the top of my head, I proposed what I mocked up and posted below; an always available means of …

August 8, 2008
0 comments

Finder and Mail Itches

Finder

Largely to make it easier for those who don’t know about the Info window or how to control file sharing, a button in the banner at the top of shared nodes:

The button would open the Sharing pane in …

June 23, 2008
0 comments

Minor Outrages in Pages

Based on Pages ’08 (3.0.2). Some of these apply to Numbers and/or Keynote as well.

Template Selection

The template category and template selector panes should allow type-ahead selection when either pane has keyboard focus. The category selector only jumps to

…

June 18, 2008
0 comments

Chat Window Zoom

A bit of visual pleasantry for chat clients.

If you have Firefox 3 or Opera 9.5, check out the 4 frames in an animated PNG:

For browsers that do not yet support aPNG, here is the frame-by-frame:

Double-click

…

April 8, 2008
2 Comments

Drag-and-Drop IM Quotes

Click on a conversation participant’s buddy icon:
Drag and drop to your e-mail client:
A new message is created:

Assuming there is an e-mail address associated with the IM handle in your address book, the message is pre-addressed.

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April 5, 2008
0 comments

Keynote Guidance

A few ideas to improve the alignment guides in Apple’s Keynote presentation software, based on version 4.0.3.

Allow users to simultaneously create intersecting vertical and horizontal guides by dragging from the upper left corner between the rulers. This halves the

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March 2, 2008
0 comments

A Few iPhoto Comments

Based on iPhoto 7.1.3.

General

Clicking the bottom left Info pane while viewing a single photo switches back to the library/album view rather than allowing input.
When viewing a day with multiple events, dropping one event poster on another should

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