A Distant Cousin

This is pretty much a technical blog. Okey, it’s a technical blog about software and developers, even the tag line is about a developer in some kind of heart surgery or something. So, I thought hard before taking a D-tour of those topics to address a political event like Obama’s address in Cairo tomorrow.

The reason is that I think I have a vantage point on the topic, being an Egyptian living in the west and subjected to the sheer volume of press coverage of the Obama campaign, transition, administration, and every little thing.

First of all, I want to address some of the arguments about the visit and the speech.

No Muslim World: trying to put a geographical boundary around the Muslim world is like giving membership cards for intellectuals. There are no specific qualifications yet a lot of people are qualified.

Visit is endorsement to the Mubarak regime: Not really, the reason the Obama administration chose Cairo rather than any other Islamic country is on basis of elimination. Helene Cooper predicted it best. You know, Syria and Iran off limit, Indonesia would be playing favor with his childhood town, Saudi Arabia too holy, Turkey not Arabic enough, Iraq too many American forces, Palestine and Pakistan no no from secret service, Libya too crazy, Gulf Area too rich and too small for a big speech. So Cairo is the place, not with all the advantages but rather the place with no ‘Obvious’ disadvantages except for the no-democracy thing. Well, America lived with that for so long why stop now?. I can assure you that all Obama wanted was a podium with Al-Azhar or any other mosque in the background, a Muslim-y looking crowd and his teleprompter of course. If Mubarak had visited Washington as planned, maybe Obama wouldn’t have met with him in Cairo.

Cairo turning into a police/security barrack: Well, what else is new? Every time Mubarak goes out to buy new socks, Cairo turns upside down and a buffer zone of police top officers is created along the way from the presidential palace to the socks shop downtown.

Invitation to the ‘real’ Egypt: As much as I love for that to happen, we all know that not gonna. Simply because such a trip for Mubarak himself isn’t gonna happen. The guy have a financial meltdown, a GM bankruptcy, fading middle class, rising unemployment numbers, diving home prices across America, two wars, failing health care system, failing students, near failing social security system, changing climate, and a VP who doesn’t stop talking and you want him to pay attention to your problems of being unemployed, under paid if employed, having no health care, or decent education, having no freedom, or rights, being tortured, beaten, robbed, and used by all means possible. Please be serious. It’s not that Obama doesn’t care, or doesn’t know, or doesn’t have the means, no it’s just he’s not your president and probably have shit to do.

Protesting the visit: Look, I’m totally for the protests and all that. But don’t protest a speech from a pretty reasonable guy who is globally beloved and hugely popular in Europe, home of all Anti-American protests during the last 8 years. A guy who literally gave his first TV interview in office to an Arabic TV network.  I’m not saying don’t protest, I’m saying protest something that is actually worth protesting. For example, Obama broke one of his promises few weeks ago when he didn’t release the torture photos of Guantanamo camp and said that his administration will not seek the prosecution of those who carried out the torture or those who authorized it under the banner of protecting the American troops overseas. But it’s actually for political reasons including avoiding the embarrassment of addressing the Muslim world while photos of torturing Muslims is circulating the media and the Internet, and also avoiding a fight with the Republicans (who are basically responsible for all what happened in Gitmo) in a time where national unity and bipartisanship in Washington is the talk of the town. So, if you wanna protest, protest all you want but do it for something that will get you some air time in the west to where you wanna deliver a message and not just get couple of nights in a Cairo police station.

 

Obama speech in Cairo for the Muslim world is part of his effort to fix the image of the United States around the world, especially in the Muslim world where good relations would go a long way in proving Obama right when he talks about dialog and direct diplomacy being the best way to secure America. So, this is more about Obama playing his best card in the effort to secure his own country, just like Bush did. And while Bush best card was his ‘Dickishness’ powered by Tomahawk cruise missiles, Stealth fighter jets, and empty threats of plug ’n’ play democracy, Obama’s best card is ‘Inclusion’ powered by inspiring rhetoric, compelling life story, and head-on style of addressing problems. Just look at what he’s done in Notre Dame and you’ll get a sense of how he tackle problems. Of course the middle east is no anti-abortion protest but you get the picture.

So, stop treating the man as if he’s the distant cousin who was elevated to leading the company producing all of our products and suddenly we’re expecting him to return all the favors that we never gave him, forgetting that the company is declining and stuck in legal disputes while its PR machine has been put on hold for the last 8 years. Stop casting your unrealistic hopes, disappointed dreams, everlasting problems, and growing anger on him. Start taking matters in your own hands and realize that no one, but you, can solve your own problems.

CubicExplorer Arabic Translation is Available

There are many Windows Explorer alternatives available on the web. The one that I’m using is CubicExplorer which is pretty cool. It supports tabs, saving sessions, multiple sessions, bookmarks, bookmarks grouping, themes, and localization (here are some screenshots).

I’m contributing to CubicExplorer with the Arabic translation in an effort to make it more available to the Arabic user. The translation file is not integrated in the application build yet. You can get the link to the translation file from the CubicExplorer forum, or you can download the file directly from my SkyDrive page.

The translation works with the RC3 release of the 0.9 version of the application which is pretty stable. I recommend that you download the RC3 release rather than the 0.8 version. You can find the RC3 release at this page (or directly to the executable file or the zip package).

Enjoy it.

No Thanks, we don’t want your feedback..

So, I have this idea about including a dropdown list in the Google web search results page so you can select a saved URL to search in. In the advanced search page, you can enter a URL to limit the search results to. I use this feature a lot with a number of web sites. So, I thought that it would be great to get those web sites in a drop down list so I can quickly search them. This will actually add a benefit to logging in while searching other than recording my activity on the web which is benefiting other people more it’s benefiting me.

Following a positive attitude to improve the products that I’m using, I decided to submit a suggestion to Google about this idea and here’s the shock. No link to submit feedback in the search home page. No link to submit feedback in the About Google page. No link to submit feedback in Contact Us page. Now, I have to ask a question in the Google web search help forum just to submit a suggestion of improvement. The only link to feedback is about the search results. If you’re not satisfied with the results you can submit a comment.

Gmail is no better. No link in the home page or in the Settings page. When searching the Gmail Help for “Submit Feedback” you get 3 results.

Chrome doesn’t have a link either. When searching the Chrome Help for “Submit Feedback” you get 2 results. Firefox has a “How to Contribute” link in the Support home page (that you can access from Help > Help Contents) where you can – not only submit feedback but also – do a lot of things to help. IE has a menu item in the Help menu that leads to the Support page.

So, Is Google not interested at all in what we have to say? Of course, there are the forums like the Chrome forum. But it’s not like a “Submit Feedback” link that is a classic software practice that every software company does. Is Google re-writing the rules of software companies? first, it’s the never ending beta products. Then the Chrome EULA (which they had to update after controversy) and now this.

The whole feedback thing is a little annoying. The “Submit Feedback” pages in other web sites are not that great either. They feel like dumping a paragraph or two in a never ending list that no body really reads. I wish that feedback is taking more seriously.

I want my dropdown list. I guess that’s what I’m saying..

Windows 7: The missing point

With everyone reviewing the first “beta” of Windows 7, I wouldn’t say that this is a first look. If you haven’t seen these snapshots before, you’re definitely not online.

Two quick notes before we start. First, It’s not really a beta, it’s just Build 7000 which the Microsoft page for Windows 7 doesn’t confirm as an official beta. However they have a “What’s coming in the Windows 7 beta” title in the page. Second, how I got it and how can you. It’s out there, man. you know it, I know it, even Microsoft knows it. Anyway, Let’s dive in.

Was it 20 minutes? maybe a little more, I’m not sure. But I’m sure that the installation is much faster than Vista and XP. The installation is pretty much straight forward and similar to Vista except for the option to setup a “homegroup” which was the first thing to grab my attention (only because I saw the new task bar in snapshots. We’ll get to that later).

Homegroup is simply a simple way to create a home network. The name is – I think – an opposite to Workgroup which is the nickname for any network group with no domain controller. So, Other than the name, how’s a Homegroup is different from a Workgroup?

It’s easier to create/join a Homegroup. Open a Windows Explorer and choose “Homegroup” on the left and you get the wizard. When you click to create a homegroup you get the option to share a “Library”.

Library is a new word for me, so I decided to follow what it means. I found in the task bar an icon with a folder in it.

I assumed that it’s “My Computer” or “Computer” (since Microsoft decided in Vista that it’s not mine anymore) but it turns out to be Windows Explorer and it opens on “libraries”

Interesting, so is this like Virtual folders from Vista that never really made it to mainstream? Yes, but with a different approach. Virtual folders was a shortcut to the results of search keyword except the results are dynamic. It wasn’t a snapshot of the results but a shortcut to the search. In Windows 7, a library is a pool of the content of many folders in one view which is great if you want to find things quickly unless those things have the same name because the view doesn’t show content with the same name differently. so you can easily end up with this.

So, a library is a folder of folders which is cool but my question is “Why?”. Isn’t the whole point of folders is to keep things organized and if you want to find them use “Search”. The only logical benefit of libraries is to combine the content of different folders in your machine and offer them in one entry point on a Homegroup which is exclusive to Windows 7 machines (a note in the Help section) at Home (at least for now, not clear if it’s offered through Windows Server).

What I’m trying to say – again - is “Why?”. Libraries in Windows 7 are replacing “My Documents”. If you click “Documents” in Start menu, windows explorer opens on the “Documents” library. So, Microsoft is pushing libraries as the default option (with no obvious chance for the user to change this default).

Anyway, what’s the default folders included in this Documents library? Two folders, [My] Documents and Public Documents. This choice brings another subject to my attention. My Documents. There are couple of issues here:

• Anyone who ever had to suddenly re-install Windows (which is a big portion of the Windows population) knows very well that keeping files under My Documents is a bad bad bad idea. Why there isn’t a way to easily change the default location of My Documents, anyway?
• The default and only breakdown of folders includes Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Music, Pictures, Videos (and other less famous ones). Of course you can create new folders, but Microsoft is treating those folders specially, they’re referenced in all Microsoft application in Windows and sometimes you can’t get rid of them. Like Windows Media Player you can’t remove the “Users” folder. You can only “Ignore” it.

• Other than My Documents, there are also Public Documents. Now, you can share My Documents and you can share Public Documents. In Windows 7 they’re combined in the Documents library. Again, the urging question, “Why?”. What’s the point of having two folders?

Back to libraries in Windows 7, if you take a look at the image of the wizard. You’ll notice that you can select the libraries to share and they’re only limited to the default libraries created by Microsoft (by the way, if you shared a default library after you have deleted it. It will be created again!!!). Now, What about “My” libraries? the ones that I created. I have to use something similar to “Share” in Windows Vista. How is this faster or simpler? Why can’t the windows Users folder be easily customizable and expandable. Why can’t it have profiles based on the user category? Does Microsoft really think that ALL Windows users are the same? I want to be able to apply a certain User folder based on my category (Student, Power user, Developer, Mum, etc.) and I want those profiles to be expandable, editable and created by the community.

For my first look at Windows 7, Microsoft is missing the point on why they’re making changes. Not only for the libraries, but also for the new taskbar. But that’s another post.

How Firefox can outlast other browsers?

It’s probably not news by now, but you should know up front. I  really like Firefox. I favor it over IE, Chrome, that Apple thing, Opera, and even Oprah (these are the only links I could find, really). But my favorite software is in – shall we say – “danger”. It’s being attacked by all the other competitors who are planning its end. Okey, that’s a little over-dramatic.

With the release of Google Chrome and replacing Firefox in Google package (who is the idiot who didn’t see that coming?), everybody knows that the browser war is far more interesting now than ever. Even though that IE is the front runner which everybody should be after, but with its 70+ % market share, it’s more realistic to consider the Firefox-Chrome race more interesting.

Even though the difference in market share between the Firefox 20% and the 3-months-old Chrome is significant, the weight of Google and its control over Mozilla cash-supply (after 2011) closes the gap between the two. Google deal with Mozilla to share advertisement revenues offers Mozilla a big share of its annual revenue. Shutting down this deal might significantly affect Mozilla and it will cause a big reaction from the community against Google until the next time they decide to google something (I wanted to say ‘search’, but.. c’mon). Mozilla has to figure this out starting now, and I hope they’re doing that.

Meanwhile, the market share battle is on between the two browsers. Chrome could enjoy a temporary spike in its market share (it did) by all the power users who are curious about the brand new browser (I was one of them). But when the dust settle, Firefox users return to their browsers just to avoid missing the not-so-secret weapon of Extensions.

When was the last time you tried a bare Firefox with absolutely no extensions? it’s really awkward experience. Extensions are what makes Firefox a really special software. It’s all the little things that saves you seconds but really brings the web to your finger tips. It’s going to take Chrome along time to build a community that can match the effort of the Mozilla community.

But for Firefox to really survive, it must go on the offense. Tackle the IE market share rather than worrying about Chrome.

Since it’s extensions that distinguish Firefox, they somehow should be available to the average user as they are to the power user. Most average users don’t use advanced tools because they simply don’t know they have the option. I watched a guy using Edit > Copy because he doesn’t know about Ctrl+C and context menus (seriously). Mozilla should make an effort to somehow offer the average user the blessings of extensions. Maybe they’re already doing that by ‘Fashion your Firefox’ but it’s still a web page that the average user needs to go to first. Try to put extensions more front and center.

Then, there’s the distribution problem. Most average users don’t really user IE, they use the ‘internet’ through the blue ‘e’ icon. The whole concept of browser and better browser is missing for these people. So, these are like 20% of IE share (I’m totally making those numbers up). 40% don’t care about the browser to choose the better one. 35% don’t know why they should switch, they really think that this is the best browser. and 5% are stupid because they know it’s a bad browser but they’re using it anyway (of course, I’m excluding IE testers). What I’m trying to say is a large share of IE users are using it because it’s pre-loaded and this is a problem not only for Firefox but also for Chrome. Apply tried to go through the back door and push Safari through iTunes. I don’t think that this has made a huge difference but it’s worth the shot.

Frankly, I don’t know how to solve the distribution problem. But I know this, until Google figures about a way to solve it, Chrome is not going to make a lot of progress in Firefox market share. I hope ;)

Raising Expectations

If you’re following up with the US presidential election these days, you probably heard about Bill Clinton praising Sarah Palin and describing her as a candidate who can’t be underestimated. Even though Sarah Palin has been proven to be a political joke that is clearly not qualified to run anything not to mention a superpower. Add this to the Clinton’s (newly found) support for Obama, it’s easy to find yourself wondering what’s Bill doin’. The answer is simple, he’s raising expectations for Sarah Palin, making her look like someone who’s is very tough to beat so that when the fight is over and she won then Bill was right and if she lost then she’s letting everybody down.

Now, I hear your question from the minute you started reading. What does this has to do with anything that I ever wrote about? It’s simple really, Bill Clinton is a very skilled politician but Microsoft maybe not so much.

Couple of weeks ago, Microsoft started rolling out the “highly anticipated” ad campaign starring Jerry Seinfeld. Here are three facts about this campaign. First, People were waiting for months for Microsoft’s response to “Get a Mac” campaign by Apple. Second, All the buzz through August was about how Microsoft is spending 300 millions on a counter-attack ad campaign led by an agency that is known for its re-branding experience. And last, The negative reviews started 90 seconds after the first run of the first ad that didn’t deliver any kind of message.

Now, contrast Microsoft’s ads rollout strategy with what Bill Clinton did in the ABC interview and you’ll figure out one killer mistake that Microsoft is doing. Whenever I’m watching one of those ads, all I can think of is “300 millions for this”. Other people are even adding “crap” to my question. Even though we don’t know what the 300 millions are actually for (they could be for production, for distribution or both) But the important thing is that all we can think of is that Microsoft’s counter punch that costs more than a year and 300 million dollars is a not-so-funny joke between Gates and Seinfeld. It’s not the first time that Microsoft has done this mistake, remember the roll out of Vista, back when it was longhorn, people were very excited about Aero and the new Windows that just looks fantastic. And then there was the waiting, the features cutting to finish the waiting, and UAC messages. Over time people started getting used to how exciting Vista looks like and when it was time for it to be released it was like “So, what else is new”.

I can understand Microsoft’s reasons for involving the community in the development process by providing feedback and participating in testing. But let me revise those two reasons for a second. Feedback like suggesting features and tweaking existing features based on suggesting is an endless meaningless process. With all do respect to feedback, there’s a limit to people’s involvement in the process. Software design is simply not a democracy where anyone can be the designer and everyone can vote on design. If Microsoft don’t trust their own designers to build the right thing then maybe they should fire them and get other people who they can trust. Users involvement in Microsoft’s products via feedback is certainly not helping products being better and it’s not helping making users feel like they’re part of the process because at the end of the day they’re paying for those products, how can I help build something and then you’re charging me for it. As for testing, Microsoft can always test their products in a controlled environment by professional teams without having 5 million users testing it like they did with Vista.

Even if there are more reasons to involve the community in the development process, this still doesn’t justify letting products out in the open very early and giving away the excitement factor months before the final release and raising expectations for what the final release will look like.

You can say that Microsoft started avoiding this mistake with Windows 7 by setting a very strict secrecy policy (even with the leak of some screenshots) described as translucency Vs. transparency (credited to Steven Sinofsky who is the senior VP for windows) which is widely criticized by critics and Microsoft news bloggers that with no news coming out of Redmond will probably have nothing to blog about.

To sum up. Microsoft, stop building expectations for your products and find a balance between how to share info with the media, partners, and community and how to roll out the excitement very near to the shipping date.

What Google Reader is missing?

I must confess something. Google Reader really changed a part of my life. Before it, I used to spend - at least - 5 times the time I'm spending now to keep track of all those web sites and blogs (actually I'm spending the same time but I'm following up with 5 times the content). Even though I'm a great fan as it's obvious. Lately, I think I'm having some problems with Reader. They're not really problems but more like I've pushed the application to its limit that I need something more. Something like:

"No, thanks" button in feed preview:
Whenever you're reviewing a feed from the recommendations page and you realize that you don't want this feed anymore, you have to go back to the recommendations page and click the "No, Thanks" button to make room for other feeds. Why can't I get a button in the top banner while I'm reviewing the feed.

Keep the preview banner visible.
The banner on the top while I'm reviewing the feed should be kept visible so that I can decide on the feed quickly and don't have to scroll back up and click "Subscribe" or "No, Thanks" (which is not really there as I described earlier).

"Show me More" button in the Top Recommendation section to show three more suggestions.
I really like the small badge on the top right of the home page that shows the top recommendations. If only I can quickly display 3 more feeds without having to view the recommendations page.

Control the keywords of recommendations.
I've subscribed to tens of feeds through the recommendations page that is reading my subscriptions and bringing me more feeds that are like my subscriptions (totally violating my privacy without even asking if I like to do this or not or even giving me a chance to turn it off but whatever). But sometimes I want to add more topics without subscribing to feeds of that topic and without searching for a feed. This way I can include this topic in my daily 5 minutes preview of recommended feeds.

Sort unread items from old to new while keeping the read items visible.
Whenever I travel or away from any PC for couple of days, I get back and I find 1000+ posts (which takes me either 5 hours or 1 second to read). Reading the news section of my feeds is the most troubling one in this situation because I get the latest updates on sports (for example) before the pre-match analysis (which I love especially when I can find out the results 2 seconds after I read them to find out how ridiculous those sports analysts are. They're starting to be more like political analysts and we're way off topic now). Of course I can sort the posts by oldest which will show me the older posts first but will also give me the already read posts. And I can also only show the unread posts which will solve this problem but will prevent me from reading the already read posts (which I like to do every once in a while just for fun). What I want is to be able to display all posts (not just the unread ones) and while they're sorted by oldest. Something like scrolling down to the first unread post and then go through them to the newer ones. I don't travel that much but maybe I will if I have this feature.

More clever use of the Home page.
Most of the time I finish reading all the posts. So I go back to the Home page which is empty now because I finished reading all the posts. The message tells me that I can browse the recommendations or go to Google news. But I don't want to do this, I just want something to fill this area. Something like bigger recommendations badge, clip of Google news that displays the kind of news that I would be interested in (like news from my hometown or ones that match my subscriptions keywords, you know more violation of my privacy type of thing).

Read later folder/section.
I don't know what the Starred folder is for, I just used it to mark stuff to be read later. But that not the way I wanted to always be. I wanna be able to see how many items I have marked to be read later.

  That's it for now, maybe I have more demands later. If I'm sending this as a letter to Google, I would probably sign it as "yours truely, lazy reader lover" :).

Why Help Suck (2 of 2)

It doesn’t really matter why exactly help system has become inefficient (if it ever were efficient). That fact by itself is not that important unless we do something about it. If you’re developing software and you’re considering developing a help system for your product. Here are some Does and Don’ts that could help you.

• Use screen casts instead of how-to guides: important part of any help system is the how-to guide (step-by-step description of how to do a specific task). Screen casts are videos capturing the user’s (in this case, the tutor’s) behavior on screen while performing a task. Videos are way cooler than how-to guides, and they’re not that hard to produce. Those videos have to be described in text in a way that would make it easy for the user to find a video using search.
• Focus on search: the problem with categorization is that no two people can ever agree on how to categorize any content. No matter how organized and simple your categorization might be, it will always be hard for some people to follow because they’re not aware of all the content and that’s why they don’t understand why would you put this topic under this category not that one. Search goes around all that hassle by directly jumping to what’s related to the user’s input. You can optimize your content for search by adding the different forms of questions that might be asked about each topic. This way when users asks those questions, they can find them and hence their answers. You might as well tell the users that it’s okey to ask their questions in plain English because they don’t really expect that.
• Use search engines to index your help system: since search should be the central focus of the start page of any help system, if you’re using an online help system you might as well use a search engine as your primary search engine to search your help system. All major search engines offer powerful tools to use their search as the primary search for any web site.
• Offer categories as alternative: the Office 2007 Ribbon is one of the best things ever, but some people just didn’t like it. Don’t do the same mistake as Microsoft and drop categorization completely and only relay on search (they dropped menus and toolbars completely and only relied on the ribbon). Two reasons: some users might not know exactly what they’re looking for, browsing can help them. Other users use the topics related to the result of their search to find out more information about the software (Related topics. that sound like another thing you can do).
• Offer related topics: some users use help to learn about the software, it’s a very hands-on approach. On the side of each page (not necessarily on the side, it could be up and down as well), make a list of the topics that are related to the topic is being displayed sorted by their relativity to the displayed topic. You could also create another section similar to the idea of “People who browsed this, also browsed..”. Offer a list of the topic that are not directly related to this topic but can be linked to it.
• Avoid endless hierarchies: categories should have a limited number of levels. Avoid having 20 levels of subcategories that will never guide a user to their destination, it will only drive them mad.
• Avoid confusing titles: while browsing your content, topics titles are not only representing the content of that topic, they are pretty much the topic. No one we’ll go through a topic unless it’s exactly what he’s looking for and if the title is not clear enough to speak for the topic, no one will read it. If the titles of your pages doesn’t seem clear enough for the average user, modify them or make it clear that you’re applying some naming conventions and list their meanings.
• Audience-Sensitive content: wouldn’t it be great if my help system can speak to me? And I don’t mean “speak” as in the act of talking, but more like as in using a language that I can understand. One major problem with help systems is that the content is used according to the concept “one size fits all”. If you’re looking for a piece of information, it’s there; you just have to find it. And finding that piece of information isn’t just about finding what page it’s on. It’s also about finding in what part of the page it is. Average users find themselves scrolling through pages of details on how a file is being streamed as binary before it’s transmitted over the TCP/IP protocol and how it’s being… zzz. Power users find themselves scrolling through pages of introductions on how to create a new file and a description of the Open File window. An audience sensitive content would offer different forms of the same content depending on the level of user’s proficiency determined by the user. Users are promoted to select their level of proficiency in the software and other topics that are related to the software. For example, a user that has experience in the previous version of the software doesn’t need to know about how features work; he only needs to know about the differences between the two versions. This kind of content can be developed by carefully tagging each paragraph of the content and just hiding and showing those paragraphs depending on the user’s preferences.

All this is great (I’m sure you agree ;) ), but is it really what you want? Do you want your help system to be efficient enough that users can actually learn and solve their problems without contact your support line or attending your courses? Maybe it’s not, but that’s another story.

Why Help Suck (1 of 2)

Ever used the help system? Of course you have. Hated it? Of course you did. No body likes to go into the Help menu and just browse the Help Content. Everybody seems to try to use those other resources (forums, blogs, screen casts, etc.) to learn how to go around the software they’re using. Since this is quite clear, why would you bother build a Help Contents for your software. Most software vendors already know that, yet the only obvious enhancement in Help systems is to make it online. In other words, make it everywhere.

But what’s wrong with Help. I mean we know it’s not the best thing, but what’s exactly is wrong with it.

First, It's a lot of reading. No body likes to read that much, even book lovers, they read for fun and knowledge not for solving problems. It’s like those emergency instructions, the plane is going down, your hair is on fire and you’re reading the emergency instructions. Users don’t want to read those long pages just to figure out an solution to their problem, they want “Help”. They want answers to their questions, which are most likely not to be included in the frequently asked questions (I don’t know where do these come from anyway).

Second, when users turn to help, they’re looking for answers. That means Search, right? well, CHM (the most used format for help files) have a terrible search capabilities and results. The problem with using plain search for help is it’s not optimized for finding answers for questions. A user should be able to enter a question and get an answer for it. Online help system have better search capabilities but they still lead to the same boring content.

Finally, It’s not that help content is long and unreadable. It’s that “everybody” has to read (or rather scan) it to get any information out of it. A beginner user doesn’t need to know every little detail that a power user might be looking for. Users don’t just want answers to their questions, they also want that answer in a way they understand.

But it’s not like help systems are that bad all the way and no one tried to make them better. Some companies are actually trying. The new Vista help looks pretty good.

 

You can see from the snapshot that:

1. Search is front and center in the help window, it’s your primarily entry point.

2. Windows Basics is the first item in the “Find an answer” section. Because it’s a help system for Windows which is the most basic thing, the users expected to land here are beginners (and I mean people who need a second to tell the difference between a mouse and a keyboard).

3. Windows Online Help is important because offline help can’t be updated as online help. It should be reached easily.

4. Most software application put “What’s New” up front, which is not a topic for help but rather a topic for white papers. Good job to keep the section but put it at the end of the list.

5. Also, because the expected users are beginners, it’s logical to offer them a chance to contact someone for help.

6. The offline help sign switch the search box results to include results from online help.

Other help systems include:

• Option to comment on the content page where users can add their own experience and discuss the content of the page.
• Social tools to share the content of those pages.
• Discussion forums.

All of that seems fine but still not enough. What would it take for a help system not to suck. Let’s leave that to another post.

Firefox 3 is here..

Of course by now you already know that Firefox 3 has been released yesterday. Instead of just talking about how great the new version seems to be, I’m gonna cover the release coverage. Here’s a sum up of some interesting links about the new Firefox.

Watch it in action

Field Guide

Field Guide for Power Users

Download Count

Spread Firefox: Download Day: An attempt by the Firefox community to set a Guinness world record for the most downloads of an application in 24 hours.

Firefox 3 passes 8 million downloads in the first 24 hours

News Coverage

Firefox 3 on Sky News

Article about the effect of community on Firefox

Forbes article on why Firefox matter

Funny stuff

IE team sends a cake to the Firefox team (also here)

The Colbert bump for Firefox 3

Get a download certificate from Mozilla

.. enjoy your new Firefox everyone.