sugarenia.com

Do you think I should end this year with a ranting? Well, you think or not, I’ll do, because it’s something that bugs me to no end, literally.

Just how difficult is it for a web application programmer to integrate two different types of error messages to his amazing login system? And by two types I mean:

The username you provided does not exist in our database, please retry.

…and…

The password you provided is wrong, please retry.

It’s not rocket science, it’s not even a politically correct way (and by politically I mean usability-wise) to signify login errors. It’s just two sentences that can help you decide if you’ve typed your password wrong or if you’ve selected the “other” nickname you use when you have signed up.

Latest culprit: The coComment site. After some months of absence, I decided to give it a try again. And this is what it greeted me with:

What did I do wrong? Was my username OR my password erroneous?!

Now I must go back and check my Hotmail and Gmail accounts, to check if there is any confirmation e-mail with my subscription data in it.

Hhhrmpf.

Happy New Year, everyone.

P.S. An excellent book to read, just to get your error messages (and more) right: Defensive Design for the Web. One of the best books I’ve ever read on web design, period.

usability, login error, defensive design for the web, error messages

Time for celebrations. The keeper of this blog, almighty Sugar, who likes computers and web and talking about herself in third person, has her birthday today.

Full 24, baby. The whole package.

Plus, she wants to wish a Merry Christmas to all of her readers. Don’t forget: eat much.

P.S. Yay for Capricorns!

I’m being hit by spam big time, these days.

Just yesterday and today, my measly spam meter of 5000 spam comments (I used to be so proud of it) peaked to freaking 15000!

What is happening? Has anyone else noticed that?

Thank God for Akismet. I cannot really think of how I could handle all this rubbish without it.

spam, wordpress, akismet

I’m sure all of you Mac users know that during this week, a joint effort by independent Mac programmers and users called MacHeist offered 10 high class Mac applications at a ridiculously low price (49$), while the combined pack actually cost a lot more (356.74$). 25% of the money that would be raised from MacHeist was to be distributed to various charity foundations, as a symbolic move.

I really liked this approach and decided to watch how it goes before buying my 10-app pack. When I saw that during the first day more than 20,000$ were gathered, I was thrilled. But I was almost sure that it would die out, and no more han 50,000$ would be gathered.

The Mac community proved me wrong. Today, almost 12 hours before the end of Macheist, more than 150K are gathered, over 50K over the initial target. That is amazing, truly amazing. 10 high class apps for dirt cheap, half of the money to charity. Sounds nice, no?

I’ve eventually bought my pack yesterday, I got about 7-8 of my registration numbers till today. I have to say, it feels really nice to pay for some very good apps (namely DevonThink Personal, Disco, Delicious Library, Newsfire, Textmate) and to know that at the same time, you donated some of your money for a good cause.

On the other hand, I was watching MacAppADay.com since the start of this month, but I never got the chance to get a free license, because all the good apps were depleted after a few minutes.

But MacHeist gave this idea a new twist. I hope, nay, I beg for this to happen again. I’m sure I’ll find one or two apps that will make me buy the whole packet.

A huge bravo to all MacHeist founders and contributors. And a huge bravo to all of Mac community, programmers and users alike.

macheist, devonthink, disco, delicious library, newsfire, textmate, mac, apple, charity

Do you remember Firebug? That nice little extension that could be used in addition to the Web Developer Toolbar to add some essential web design functionality to our beloved Firefox? Well, you can as well forget all about it.

Firebug is dead - long live the Firebug! The new beta of the extension is out, full of web developer candy that you cannot find anywhere else (unless you’re willing to combine a kazillion of extensions and incorporate them all in your everyday workflow).

With features like crisply clear cascade view, image and colours preview, live CSS tweaking and on-the-fly disable rules, you can not go bad in debugging CSS with Firebug. If you’re always scratching your head about where does this damn layer starts, or why the padding in this box is twice as expected, you can use the Inspect feature to automatically highlight the box model of every element.

And it’s not just that. The new beta of Firebug has literally a ton of features to offer. I’ve installed it at work and it managed to take over my Web Developer Toolbar workflow.

If you’re into web design and development, you simply must download this beta. Trust me.

firebug, firefox, firefox extension, web design, web development