• People don’t smile at Charles de Gaulle. Not the restaurant staff, not the people at the check-in desks, not the people at the security  checkpoints, not the people at the terminal — not even the taxi driver dropping you off at the airport in the first place! There are no clowns at Charles de Gaulle but if there were, I bet they would be the type that has teardrop makeup on their cheeks.
• Charles de Gaulle, a modern airport for international travelers, offers a choice of more than five different newspapers absolutely free. All in French…
• 200 ml of orange juice after the security checkpoint costs about 5 euros. That’s 25 euros per litre, or roughly 20x the cost in your average supermarket.
• The Charles de Gaulle airport toilets have one of the shortest designs I’ve ever come across in terms of back-to-front length. This makes using them challenging and, yes, somewhat disgusting.
• The Charles de Gaulle airport toilets are extremely shallow. I will not get specific here, but suffice to say it’s another challenge indeed.
• The Charles de Gaulle airport toilet seats are not even matching the toilet!  Perhaps this photo best illustrates this:

Coming from the LX3, which is a camera I really love, I have a bit of Panasonic bias. I like the way it performs and handles, and that has at least up until recently made me convinced that I should get a GF1, especially since it has (had) a much better AF performance than the Olympus PENs.

So hard to choose!

However, I’m starting to slowly change my mind. I was recently playing with an E-P1 in a shop and was first very annoyed with the Auto mode which consistently chose slower shutter speeds than was possible to manage without a tripod. Then after about 20 shots, I realized that the in-body image stabilization (IBIS) was turned off. After enabling it, I suddenly got almost 100% sharp photos instead. (Btw, I guess this tendency to select too slow shutter speeds is a firmware bug or something? Shouldn’t it take into consideration whether IBIS is enabled or not?)

Unfortunately, Panasonic chose the route to put image stabilization in their lenses, but not in all of them (and obviously not in rivaling Olympus lenses). Olympys, on the other hand, chose the in-camera body stabilization instead, which means that any lens attached enjoys the benefit of stabilization. 3 stops of IS is pretty huge. In the Panasonic LX3, I can sometimes take sharp photos at 1/8 shutter speeds without a tripod I if set it to burst mode and take 3-4 photos at the same time.

This leads me to think that buying a camera without IBIS is a pretty bad idea, given that many lenses (20mm/1.7, 7-14mm, 9-18mm) don’t have IS in the lens either. Also, with the new firmware update, it appears that Olympus isn’t that far behind in terms of AF performance anymore, although the kit lens isn’t very fast of course (though I didn’t find it slower than my LX3).

So, I’m now a bit torn. I’m starting to lean towards an E-PL1 because it also has a built-in flash, and the out-of-the-box colors of the JPEG images are simply stunning. In general, it feels like it has many advantages over its bigger brothers E-P1 and E-P2 while at the same time being cheaper.

At the same time, I really want the Panasonic 20mm/1.7 lens and think I’d use that more than any kit zoom, and I realize that buying that lens separately ends up getting pretty expensive compared to buying it as a kit lens with the GF1.

Am I overrating the importance of IS here? It feels to me like buying any Panasonic m4/3 is a bad idea if you care about low light performance and want to also use the camera as a casual social setting camera.

It’s such a shame that Panasonic chose the in-lens IS route here, since it really makes me less interested in their cameras even though they seem to perform better in many aspects. At this point, I would even go as far as saying that I am hardly interested in what a future GF2 will look like, because I already know that it will force me to use 3-4 stops higher shutter speeds compared to any Olympus camera with the same pancake lens.

1. Seal of Quality

Isn’t it great that Apple reviews all programs before they’re added to the App Store? It’s a bit like the Seal of Quality™ stamp that good old Nintendo put on their NES games to ensure you that your purchase would give you hours of quality game play in front of the television set make more money.

In practice, this means that we can feel safe with our iPads knowing that the virtual chocolate box app we purchase meets Apples’ rigorous quality standards. And it’s only $0.99! That’s almost free as in beer, folks (who cares about free as in speech anyway?).

2. Browser Choice

We all know how important the web browser choice is. That’s why it’s so convenient that Apple already made the choice for us on the iPad: Safari! They even went the extra mile to make it impossible to install other browsers, so I don’t need to worry about whether or not Safari is the right choice for me.  And besides, Safari is the best browser out there, right?

Or as they say themselves:

“Our lives are full of choices. iPod Touch or iPod Nano? Silver, Pink, Orange, Green, Blue, Purple or Black? All of them?

As a for-profit corporation, we have always believed that the freedom to make smart choices should be restricted to Apple to make the product experience, the Web, and the world, a better place. This shows through with our iPad running Safari, a free-as-in-beer, closed-source Web browser that we have chosen for more than 350 people in the US. Values of choice and self-determination are built into everything that we do: you can either buy the iPad, or don’t. You know you want to.”

The new placement of window controls in Ubuntu 10.4 (beta)

This is why Ubuntu’s recent change to move the window control buttons to the left side of the window in the latest beta confuses me, because it appears that a chance has been made for no real purpose whatsoever other than a vague hint that it’s preparations for “some innovative options” on the now empty right side. But those experiments won’t start until version 10.10, due out in October 2010.

There are a couple of problems I see with this redesign:

1. The Ubuntu layout is not just about switching from right to left — it’s introducing a completely unique layout never before seen in an OS. See how the Close button is still on the right side of the button group while the buttons were moved to the left side? This means that neither Windows nor Mac OS users will benefit from the change, as both user groups will have to relearn things here.
2. The actual icons/symbols on the maximize and minimize buttons are also completely different from both Windows and Mac OS.  While Windows uses a horizontal line to represent minimize, and a square box to represent maximize, Mac OS uses colors instead (yellow to minimize, and green to maximize/zoom). Again, this means that neither Windows nor Mac OS users will benefit from the Ubuntu change, which uses some stylish arrows instead (pointing up to maximize and down to minimize). The icons make little sense (isn’t maximizing more about changing the size of the window, rather than the direction? does minimizing a window always move it down — what if your task bar is at the top like I have it?). To make it even more bizarre, once a window is in a maximized state, the icon for restoring the window looks like the actual maximize button in Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/7.

Ubuntu’s design lead Ivanka Majic tries to explain why the changes were made, but fails completely. She instead lists some questions they were asking themselves without providing any answers:

- Why do Mac OS and Windows have the buttons where they do?

- What was the functional reason behind the Mac OS choice (or the Windows position for that matter)?

- Why, when most application menus are top left should the window controls go top right?

- Why, when we read left to right is the most destructive action first?

So, what are the answers? Given that I haven’t seen any, allow me to guess:

1. Mac OS and Windows have different conventions.
2. I don’t think there were any serious usability studies behind either of the choices.
3. Why not?
4. Because it’s the most common action on a window?

It’s things like this that makes me skeptical of so-called usability experts when they think they can get away with changing things for the mere sake of change, without any evidence whatsoever that it’s a change for the better.  Majic ends her blog post about the window control button placement by indicating the true reason why they went for a completely unique arrangement:

Personally, I would have the max and min on the left and close on the right.

Update: My insanely sharp colleague Jennifer Boriss writes about this topic more elegantly from a user experience expert perspective.

linux-humor, originally uploaded by David Tenser.

Björn hittar det roliga i den här bilden på två sekunder!

Now I know how it actually looks like!

Following up on my post yesterday about my impressions with web browsing on the N900, I wanted to elaborate on one of the points I was making: Firefox’s UI model of showing controls (a.k.a. chrome) on two sides of the web page.

I see a few problems with it:

• You need to swipe your finger in a specific direction in order to reveal specific chrome (e.g. swipe to the right to show tabs, and swipe to the left to show Back/Forward buttons and some other controls).
• The split between the chrome on both sides isn’t natural. For example, both Back/Forward and tabs are types of navigation, but they’re on separate sides. This means you simply have to learn on which side specific UI is located. Not a huge problem, of course.
• If you’re zoomed in on a page, you may have to swipe several times to reach the side of the web page and reveal the chrome (or double tap and then swipe).
• Having controls at the bottom of the screen feels more intuitive to me. More objectively, though, it also works better in portrait layout when you’d rather not waste width on chrome.
• The required panning of the web page itself when reaching for chrome feels rather clunky. I’m swiping to reveal toolbar buttons, not to pan around on the page, but I have to do both at the same time in Firefox.
• The tab thumbnails are always of the same (small) size, since the chosen tab model doesn’t allow for flexibility.

My simple ideas:

Allow me to present a few ideas on how the UI could be simplified. Please excuse this poor GIMP mockup:

The mockup above shows a redesigned navigation toolbar and a different way of switching tabs. Let me explain each feature in more detail:

• The new toolbar is overlaid on top of the web page and fades (or slides) into view when interacting on the page (e.g. when scrolling or tapping).
• All buttons are on the same toolbar. This means that you don’t have to remember which direction to swipe to reveal the controls, because any direction works.
• The web page itself doesn’t pan when the toolbar appears.
• After a short while of no interaction, the toolbar fades/slides away again.
• The left side of the toolbar shows the Back/Forward buttons, the center shows the Tab (or Web Page) Switcher button, and the right side shows a Bookmark and a Tools button.
• This toolbar can easily fit in a portrait layout.
• Clicking the Tab Switcher button shows the currently open tabs. The size of the thumbnails change dynamically depending on the number of open tabs. Clicking on the Tab Switcher button again or outside the tab switching “pop-up” takes you back to the current web page again.
• Clicking the Tools button reveals a “pop-up” similar to the Tab Switcher chrome, but this one of course shows the Firefox options window. Rather than clicking a back button to come back to the web page, you click outside of the “pop-up”.

In addition to the ideas above, I would also suggest that the toolbar is made customizable. Personally, I would like a zoom button (maybe even a +/- type of button) instead of a bookmarks button, but there’s obviously a limit on how many buttons you can show at the same time. This mockup assumes approximately the same button size as in the MicroB browser, so there would be plenty of space for buttons, at least in horizontal layout.

Thoughts? Piece of crap? Just shoot me.

However, I have a confession to make: Firefox isn’t yet my default browser on the N900. I think it will be very soon, but right now, my browser of choice on this particular device is another Mozilla-based browser: MicroB. It’s actually the best web browsing experience I’ve ever had on a mobile device (but to be fair, Firefox is the second best experience, so it’s definitely up in the same league already).

Allow me to summarize my initial impressions with both of these Mozilla browsers:

• The Awesome Bar in Firefox is… awesome. I never actually reflected on how convenient it was to use until I tried MicroB, which forces me to remember URLs again.
• Weave is probably extremely useful, too, but since I’m using the latest trunk builds of Firefox (“Fennec”), I can’t actually use it.
• I’m not completely sold on Firefox’s UI model of showing controls on a surface on the sides of the web page. I’d be curious about whether there has been any usability research that suggests it’s better than the more traditional toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Btw, I’ll follow up with some ideas about this in a future blog post.
• I’ve fallen in love with the volume rocker zoom in MicroB — it’s smooth, fast and surprisingly accurate. Would love to see this in Firefox!
• When double tapping to zoom in MicroB, a subtle zoom animation is used which feels intuitive and responsive. In Firefox, the zoom is instant, making it feel less fluid.
• The default page zoom in Firefox is designed to make the full width of the page fit on the screen. This unfortunately has the side effect of making the text on almost all web pages too small to read. It seems like MicroB has chosen a different approach where the default zoom includes about 800px of the web page width, which makes it possible to read most pages without zooming in.
• Actually zooming in on a page in Firefox is a bit tricky, because it auto-zooms on the object you double tab on, even if that object is only e.g. a small image. This means that you often zoom in too much, and since it’s not possible to adjust the zoom level in an easy way (keyboard shortcuts don’t cut it, especially not for me since I have the Scandinavian keyboard layout where [Ctrl]+[-] doesn’t work), you have to double-tap again to zoom out and then try again.
• MicroB feels more responsive when panning around on a page. This is mostly due to the fact that the UI and panning is done in a separate process from the actual Gecko web rendering process. At FOSDEM, I was pleased to hear in the Mobile talk by Mark Finkle that Firefox will make full use of the Electrolysis technologies that are currently being baked. What this means, in simple terms, is that Firefox will be just as responsive as MicroB in the future since the web rendering process will be separate from the UI/frontend. I can’t wait to see the results of that (which of course will benefit desktop Firefox as well).
• The checker pattern seems to show up more frequently on the screen in Firefox compared to MicroB. I don’t know if Firefox is just more conservative with how much of the web page it pre-loads off-screen, but sometimes it can cause the whole screen to remain “blank” for a few seconds, which rarely happens with MicroB.
• The Back button history in MicroB is a good idea in theory: when clicking the Back button, small thumbnails of the previous pages are shown, making it easy to pick the page you want to get back to. However, the implementation sucks because it takes several seconds to load these thumbnails and the thumbnails are big enough that you have to pan around in order to see anything more than one page back. Would be nice to see some kind of combination of Firefox’s and MicroB’s implementation: when tapping on the Back button, Firefox would simply go back to the previous page, but when tapping and holding, it would show a pop-up with preloaded thumbnails in a similar fashion as with MicroB, except without the delay. (Maybe the actual thumbnails could be recorded when you navigate away from a page?)
• Flash — as much as I hate it — works pretty well in MicroB out of the box. In Firefox, I have to enable it manually, and the responsiveness of the UI with Flash enabled isn’t great. Can every web site switch to open video, please?

I personally feel that both MicroB and Firefox are really good web browsers, and the fact that they’re both powered by Mozilla’s Gecko web rendering engine is a huge plus for me. So in a way, I don’t feel bad for not using Firefox primarly right now, because my current web browser of choice is still filled with Mozilla love.

That said, I can’t wait to use an Electrolysis-powered version of mobile Firefox later this year!

Of course, traveling nine hours back in time also means fighting a pretty intense jet lag. The first night is always toughest (although I was pretty excited about one particular dream I had of holding the jaw of a huge lizard with one hand and petting it with the other… it’s a shame I had to wake up while I was running through the forest to get my camera!), so I’m confident that both Kadir and I will be more energized tomorrow.

26726 – 2010-02-21 kl 10.32, originally uploaded by davidnaylor83.

The picture speaks for itself. In centimeters, of course.