usability

How can I change the select ("highlight") color of an TextField in actionscript 3? I've got an input textfield with white text on a black backdrop and as a result, selections are invisible, which is horrible for usability. Thanks! PeanutPower Try this: var c:Color = new Color(MyTextField); c.setTransform({rb:255}); or for a more up to date approach: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/geom/ColorTransform.html#includeExamplesSummary Another approach is to use the Text Layout Framework, specifically a TextFlow using a SelectionManager. With the TLF, you can directly

As a two-monitor user at work, I've noticed that applications behave differently with regards to what monitor they open on (primary or secondary monitor, the last monitor the application opened on, and so on). To be honest, some applications annoy me because I want them to open on my primary monitor and I'll move them to my secondary if I want them there. However, these applications are done and out of my control, so I want to ask about my own applications that might be run by people using two monitors. What kinds of controls are available to either allow people to specify which monitor your

On a wiki-style website, what can I do to prevent or mitigate write-write conflicts while still allowing the site to run quickly and keeping the site easy to use? The problem I foresee is this: User A begins editing a file User B begins editing the file User A finishes editing the file User B finishes editing the file, accidentally overwriting all of User A's edits Here were some approaches I came up with: Have some sort of check-out / check-in / locking system (although I don't know how to prevent people from keeping a file checked out "too long", and I don't want users to be frustrated by

I have a collection of items that the user needs to group/categorize in several ways. For the sake of an example, let's say it's a collection of cars and the user wants to categorize them in the following ways: Color (red, silver, blue, black, etc.) Body shape (hatch, sedan, coupe, stationwagon, etc.) Seats (2, 4, 5, 6, etc.) etc. Have you ever come across a particularly elegant way of doing this that allows the user full freedom to define their own categories and values? Obviously, there will many be trade-offs to make in any design. For example, a learnable design might not be efficient, and

Just ran across a for parameter in an HTML label tag: <label for="required-firstname"> First Name </label> <small>*</small> <input name="required-firstname" type="text" tabindex="2" id="required-firstname" size="24" maxlength="40"> I'm converting this form to a PHP processed script, can I get rid of the for= parameters? (And out of curiosity, what does it do?) Jonas From w3schools.org: The tag defines a label for an input element. The label element does not render as anything special for the user. However, it provides a usability improvement for mouse users, because if the user clicks on the

I'm not a usability specialist, and I really don't care to be one. I just want a small set of rules of thumb that I can follow while coding my user interfaces so that my product has decent usability. At first I thought that this question would be easy to answer "Use your common sense", but if it's so common among us developers we wouldn't, as a group, have a reputation for our horrible interfaces. Any suggestions? Marcio Aguiar Source: http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/simplicity.png Read Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug . It is a great starting point, and an easy