Emulating Back and Forward On A Regular 2 Button Scroll Mouse

I have discovered just how much I depend on the back and forward buttons on my mouse. Working on a lot of different computers where I cannot control the hardware I am provided, but thankfully I can over come that by using AutoHotKey and adding the following script to the default script.

It is important to ensure the first line is in the script. If it is not there, you will not be able to use your right button for anything. Seems unintuitive, but that is how it is.

RButton::click right
RButton & WheelDown::Send {Browser_Back}  ; Left Arrow, Browser Back Button
RButton & WheelUp::Send {Browser_Forward}  ; Right Arrow, Browser Forward Button

Now I can navigate forward and backward by right clicking and scrolling.

It's MSDN, but More Usable

So, I started writting this blog back in April and completely forgot about it.  Better to post late than never I suppose.

I use the MSDN site on occasion and have always found it rather wanting.  Not because of a lack of content, but the speed of the site and the small content view caused by the large header (which you previously could not get rid of without some GreaseMonkey magic).

It appears that people are listening and there are some easter eggs that you can play around with.  Scott Hanselman has a great write-up on the easter eggs and Jon Galloway has a more focused post.  Apparently some of this information came out late last summer, but I had not heard of it until a couple months ago and it's never too late to spread the information.

There are 3 easter eggs that I am a huge fan of, namely the Low Bandwidth view, PDA view, and the Visual Studio 2010 view. 

To get at the easter eggs, it requires some URL magic.  The MSDN developers use a form of URL routing (read Scott's post if you want a more information) using the contents of the parathesises as switches.  You may have seen the "(printer)" prefixed to the "printer friendly" view before.  This uses the same concepts.

My favorite is the "Low Bandwidth" view: (loband)

You can test it out by checking out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.administration.spsolution(loband).aspx

The "PDA" version (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.administration.spsolution(pda).aspx) is very nice when you just want the information and just the information.  The Visual Studio 2010 version (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.administration.spsolution(dev10ide).aspx) will probably be my favorite in a little while... well it would be if it still worked.  Perhaps Microsoft is pulling a trick from the TV studio's and getting read of the good stuff.  At any rate, at least they the loband and pda version's still work.

User Interface Engineering

It must be a reoccurring trend that every 6 months I find myself searching for new User Interface best practices. I figured I would blog about it, so I can reference it later and update it as I find new gems.


Jakob Nielsen is a user interface design expert and has a lot of information on his web site (http://www.useit.com) and blog (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/).  Some of his styles might seem a bit bland, but his design principles are very useful.  One post in particular "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design" (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html), is a be very useful starting point in designing pages and general content.

There are 2 best practice rules of thumb that stem from #8 summary in the link above:
1) look at how other sites handle the situation and pick the best one
2)  people will spend most of their time using other sites, so unless the company is a web innovator, follow the heard and don't stray too far from it.

Donald Norman (http://www.jnd.org) is another user interface design expert.  He focuses on emotional design and human-centered design.  He does a good job of analyzing interface design in many areas most people probably don't think about (not just for the web) and does it
without getting into technical jargon.  He has a lot of blogs (http://www.jnd.org/index.xml) and essays (http://www.jnd.org/dn.pubs.html) on his site for free.

Jef Raskin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin) is one of the most famous interface design experts.  He is credited with the interface design for the Apple Macintosh UI.  He focuses on intuitive interface design.  He wrote an excellent book called "The Humane Interface" (http://books.google.com/books?id=D39vjmLfO3kC&dq=jef+raskin&printsec=fr
ontcover&source=bl&ots=COpDb3aX-a&sig=oNwG4mfm_cALGt3NlRAQr9UJOnA). I read it in college.  "Jef Raskin on 'Intuitive Interfaces'" (http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html) would be a good read to further understand Jakob's #8.

- Other good references -
Rules of Thumb for Web Design
http://www.firelily.com/opinions/thumb.html

Yale Style Manual - Web Style Guide
http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html?/contents.html