Alan's Blog

Google messes about with Gmail top-level links

Google has removed the link to Google Reader from the main list of links at the top of its Gmail page; it's still available, but you have to click the 'More ▼’ link now and choose from the dropdown menu.

A lot of RSS fans (including me) are upset about this, as shown in this TechCrunch article. Although I use an excellent RSS aggregator, FeedDemon, at home, I use GMail and Google Reader via the Web at work, and I was somewhat put out that the link seemed to have disappeared.

As the TechCrunch article says,

You can customize Gmail to a degree, and – particularly for a free product – that’s really awesome, but you can’t yet change the order of the top menu items – and that’s what’s getting users riled up.

Maybe Google will listen to this vocal subset of users, maybe they won’t. But I think it may be better if we don’t wait to see what happens, and instead a TechCrunch-reading developer immediately starts coding a browser extension that puts the damn ‘Reader’ link back.

Since we can't install stuff on our work machines an extension wouldn't be any use to me, though ...

Keeping the bad news quiet

We are to be charged £10 to visit the Old Greenwich Royal Observatory with effect from March, whereas entry has been free in the past. This doesn't seem to have been announced properly anywhere and local blogger Greenwich Gazette only only found out by accident.

Another local blogger, The Greenwich Phantom, has picked up on the story and asks if this is the thin end of the wedge and if admission charges are to be introduced for national collections in general. While I can see some logic in these straitened times for introducing admission fees I do think that they way they have been brought in by stealth on this occasion has been handled particularly badly.

Internet shopping Carts

That great comics site The Oatmeal has a rant post giving most of my complaints about the usability of shopping carts - or as he describes it, How to make your shopping cart suck less.

I agree with pretty much all of what is said, but with a couple of additions. They apply to cases when required fields are not completed and similar error messages are needed.

A lot of sites nowadays will, after you've pressed the submit button, process the form, sometimes taking several seconds, realise that a required field is missing, and finally reload the page with the error message at the top. Often, with fairly long forms, the page has scrolled down from the top so no message is visible and it can easily be missed. A variant of this is that the page isn't even reloaded; some CSS/JavaScript magic means that the error message appears without reloading. This is even worse, as I've several times thought that the submit button failed to work and continued futilely pressing the button. I've even gone back a page amd tried to start again.

There are some simple, easily-available, JavaScript solutions about that can pop up the error message in a box instead. Why on Earth can't they be used? The user can hardly miss the message when presented in such a way.

I suppose the site designers think that their methods are "cooler". <sigh>

Some drivers' intelligence

I despair sometimes ...

In central London I saw a large truck manoeuvring slowly to make a left turn into a narrow street, made narrower by cars parked on each side. A car was waiting at a nearby junction with another street for it to complete the turn. As I walked along, a bus pulled up behind the car and the driver immediately started sounding his horn, obviously not seeing the truck. Losing patience after about a minute of non-activity, the driver pulled out his bus and overtook the car, coming face-to-face with the truck. Two other cars that were behind the bus and had followed hard on his heels were right behind him, so the bus driver couldn't back up again.

In the meantime, the driver of the original, patiently-waiting, car was able to squeeze past the truck and bus and go on his way, followed by a number of other vehicles. Since I turned out of the street at that point I didn't see how the remaining participants resolved the situation.

I might expect that sort of behaviour from some drivers, especially those driving white vans, but I have usually been impressed by the road sense shown by bus drivers. Not this time, though.

Pet Peeves 3a - mobile phones again

Just now I saw a woman struggling to pay a taxi driver, get out of the taxi with a bulky package - it looked like a painting or possibly its frame - and close the cab door, all the while talking into the mobile phone that was firmly clamped to her ear. Was her call so all-fired important that she couldn't ask the other person to hold on for a minute, or even ring back? It probably took her twice as long to carry out those simple tasks as it would have normally, not to mention her rudeness to the cabbie.

Pet peeves 8

Two blog posts in one day! What is the world coming to? Will the server take the extra load?

This peeve involves shop and restaurant signs placed with no regard to passers-by. Going to lunch today I found that a new example of London's seemingly-ubiquitous roadworks had been started. This involved closing half the carriageway and part of the pavement (US sidewalk). However a shop and a restaurant still put out their signs which caused the pavement to become even narrower. Pedestrians passing the signs needed to walk in single file, waiting until no-one was coming the other way, before being able to get past. Since the street is fairly busy, that caused quite a bottleneck.

As I walked past one of the signs I pushed it closer to the wall of the shop to make more room; on my return journey I saw that it had been put back in its original position.

Pet peeves 7

This is another personal pet peeve, this time aimed at Microsoft, and in particular their Office applications. I suspect that many people will hold an opposite view.

In my job (and sometimes at home) I often need to copy and paste sections of text or data between different documents or applications. If I use the normal paste command the copied data are inserted using the same formatting as in the original document, which nine time out of ten differs from that in the receiving document. I then have to reformat my document. I know that I can use Edit > Paste > Special... or use a custom shortcut to paste without formatting, but it's a longer route and easy to forget.

There are also several non-Office applications that will take formatted pasted text, and they don't appear to have a Paste > Special... command. In such cases I often have to paste the copied item into a program that doesn't allow formatting (like Notepad) then copy/paste it into the other application. I'd find it easier if the default for the paste command were without formatting. I'd be interested to learn if others have the same issues, although I realise this blog, with its minuscule readership, is not the best place to ask for the opinions of the world at large.

Pet Peeves 6

This peeve is aimed at those working in the same office block as me, although I suspect it's fairly common in all offices. To those who are using the lifts at the same time as me: don't press the "doors close" button!

The doors close automatically. If no-one has called the lift from a particular floor they will close swiftly. If someone has pressed for a lift, the doors stay open slightly longer to give the person time to get on. There are four lifts in the area I use and it's not always possible to tell which lift will be stopping.

I've several times walked towards a lift, only for the doors to be closed before I could enter. Very often the doors have started to close as I enter, and I spot someone standing there with their finger on the "close" button. Why do these people bother? They save perhaps ten seconds maximum. Are they so keen to get back to work?

Pet peeves 5

I'm getting a little worried; I'm beginning to run out of ideas for these lists of pet peeves. Perhaps I'm not such a grumpy old man after all.

This is really nitpicking, but one thing that tends to annoy me happens when I tune the TV to catch the start of a particular programme; let's call it "Programme X". The continuity announcer then says something like "Next up, Programme Y", to which my immediate reaction is "Huh?". The announcer then goes on to say "But, before that, Programme X". I tend to confuse easily and that gets me every time. There's one channel that puts up notices on the screen "Next: Program Y", and "Later: Program Z". They'll then start showing Program X.

A similar annoyance is when the announcer says, for instance, "Now, Programme X" followed by several minutes of commercials. The announcer means "After you've sat through us trying to sell you things, we'll start Programme X", and should reserve using "Now" for the immediate future, not for in four or five minutes' time.

Pet peeves 4

These peeves are mostly about some people's speech mannerisms. In many cases they are just fillers while the speaker is working out what to say, used in the same way as "er..." and "um...". However, they can be profoundly irritating to the listener, especially when repeated several times in the same few sentences.

• "OH MY GOD!" (or, possibly worse and spelled out as an initialism,"OMG!"): this seems to be used by some (mainly teen-aged girls) to introduce every sentence regardless of content;
• "As/like I was saying...": used repeatedly and when this is the first time the matter has been mentioned;
• "Like": as used in I was, like, 'No way!', and she was, like, 'Way!';
• "Know what I mean?" repeated endlessly during a conversation.