i am using Outlook Quick Steps and I have roughly 40 of them.
Just wanted to know if there is as option to expand the view somehow.
If i need to go through 200 emails per day that could be quite usefull.
Related
I have a task to generate a file based on the data from several records (sources) that could be selected on UI. A user can select from 1 to 100 records. The generation (request processing) time depends on the number of selected records. It can be from several milliseconds to approximately 5 seconds.
I am planning to display the spinner component for this request. But as I mentioned above it might be processed too fast and the spinner will blink. So, is it ok from the UX standpoint to set some minimum displaying time for the spinner to prevent irritating blinks? If yes, then what is the best timeout? 1 second?
P.S. I have read a great Progress Indicators Make a Slow System Less Insufferable article on the Nielsen Norman Group website. But it does not fully answer my question.
Neilson's research would suggest that your guess of 1 second is in the right area - or more specifically, that the time needed is somewhere between 0.1 second and 1 second. I'd probably try 0.5 seconds and see how that feels for the users.
Note that as you can approximately tell in advance what the time will be, you know immediately weather or not to turn on your spinner. So, if the user has less than 10 selected when they press the button (based on the numbers given above, assuming a linear relationship, 10 would be about 0.5 seconds) DON'T display the spinner, but otherwise, IMMEDIATELY display the spinner. This is based on the principle that if the program knows something UX related in advance, that should be immediately shown to the user (the same principle that says you should simply not allow options that are impossible to be selected - i.e. disable them - rather than letting the user choose them and then saying "sorry, can't do that").
Im looking for a efficient view picker solution. My requirement is that I need to make a viewpicker available for selection to the users. However, there are more than 10000 documents in that view. For eg. List of all customers for a company.
The solution I tried is taking too long to load. Would appreciate if somebody can spare a thought on this.
Santosh,
you first need to go back to the UX drawing board. No user wants to scroll through a list of 10000 customers. Test (using paper mockups, not code) different approaches for the UX. Type-ahead or "my favorite" list and an FTSearch to add accounts, a preselection by location or type.
Design the principles, so users can get their work done fast. Very important: don't ask for opinions, but let user interact with your mockups, so they ACT and EXPERIENCE how it feels like.
Once that's settled you can wonder about making the selected method(s) fast.
Firstly this is more of a design / interface type question, so has no right / wrong answer, but I would appreciate peoples opinions on this.
I am creating a comparison site, and I am unsure how to proceed with the search interface. There are going to be lots of fields, and each field will potentially have many values. Some of these fields will condense the values by using a slider, but others will need a checkbox for each value available (as multiple values may be needed).
When you change any field, it will automatically update the results below, and each fields options to show whats left to filter / search.
Now I had originally intended to have the top 5 search fields visible at the top of the page in columns, and limit those fields to the top 5 most frequently occurring values. Each field would have a show more to expand the options, and there would also be a show more fields button to expand the search even more.
When fully expanded, this definitely has the capability to fill a good size screen resolution. Obviously it has the option to minimise the form again, and the results will be shown underneath, but has anyone got any ideas how this can be layed out?
We have toyed with having all the search options in a side bar, but there are so many you would probably have to scroll down a full page height 2 or 3 times to see everything which would get annoying. Clicking the max / minimise button would definitely be easier in my opinion.
A few examples but in reality are not as complicated as what we need are:
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/
http://www.holidaylettings.co.uk/homesearch.asp
Any good examples / ideas?
Ended up just having it have the 5 most important fields, with the less important options hidden, then you can show more options, and show more fields.
Simples :)
I'm using VS 2008 and I notice a lot of wasted screenspace, such as the Error List upgrade I propose below. Is there any way to change the way panels are rendered to make them smaller? Or maybe some addon to VS that does what it does but with compacted panels.
Current Error List - Only 2 errors visible
Future - 6 errors visible in same space
I don't know how to customize panels the way you're asking, but I've found my own way of dealing with panels I don't need all the time.
I keep panels like errors, search results or output set to Auto-Hide. That way they can take up a pretty decent amount of space when I want to see the lists, but they're not visible at all the rest of the time. Works well for me. When I'm not using one of those panels the only windows that are visible are the solution explorer and the code editor.
If you can afford more monitors, get them. You won't have to worry about auto-hide and you'll have enough room for it all.
While plenty of solutions exist for entering dates (such as calendars, drop-down menus, etc.), it doesn't seem like there are too many "standard" ways to ask for a time (or time range).
I've personally tried drop-down menus for the hour, minute, and second fields (and sometimes an "AM/PM" field, as well). I've also tried several clock-like input devices, most of which are too hard to use for the typical end-user. I've even tried "pop-out" time selection menus (which allow you to, for example, hover over the hour "10" to receive a sub-menu that contains ":00",":15",":30", and ":45") -- but none of these methods seem natural.
So far, the best (and most universal) method I have found is just using simple text fields and forcing a user to manually populate the hour, minute, and second. Alternatively, I've had good experiences creating something similar to Outlook's "Day View" which allows you to drag and drop an event to set the start and end times.
Is there a "best way" to ask for this information? Is anybody using some type of time input widget that's really intuitive and easy to use? Or is there at least a way that's more efficient than using plain text boxes?
I find Google Calendar's approach to be the best. Use a text box, but use JavaScript to make it sort of a drop-down for picking your time. A good demo can be found for a jQuery implementation here
I haven't implemented this on my site yet so I'm not 100% sure, but I think you also need code from this jQuery plugin here:
http://www.texotela.co.uk/code/jquery/timepicker/
Edit
The first link I posted does not require the second link's code. It is simply based off of it. To get the actual JavaScript file from the example, you can view the source of the page to find where the file is, or you can go to the URL directly
http://labs.perifer.se/timedatepicker/jquery.timePicker.js
There is quite a useful time entry tool for JQuery. It provides a 'spinner' type approach, in addition to a standard text field. It also supports the use of the mouse scroll-wheel for adjustment (as well as the traditional 'just type it in' approach) and can be configured to restrict to n-minute steps too if you like. It's pretty customisable, supports localisation and a variety of other settings, I've used it successfully in a couple of projects/demo sites.
I am a huge fan of plain language input (there was a topic on it the other day). I like the way 37signals backpack calendar let's you type things in (08/12 3pm Meeting with tom). I also like the way they handle times with their reminder system (they give you options like later today, tomorrow morning).