July 2004 - Posts

• Virtual properties anyone?

  As part of the WinFX review team, I regularly review APIs for usability issues. One thing that we as a team have been highlighting as a potential issue is the use of virtual properties. Consider the following code snippet: public class Class1 { private Read More... Posted Friday, July 30, 2004 2:23 PM by stevencl | 9 Comments Filed under: API Usability

• VS automation samples

  I've been asked for suggestions for a list of VS automation samples that would help solve tricky tasks that I've observed users working on during usability studies. Just wanted to check if anybody has such a list of samples that they would like us to Read More... Posted Wednesday, July 14, 2004 11:08 AM by stevencl | 6 Comments Filed under: Usability, API Usability

• This scares me!

  Aleksei Guzev was scared by my last post on readability vs writability. I think what might have scared Aleksei (feel free to correct me if I am wrong Aleksei) is the thought that the results of this study would be used to make a case for adding a Count Read More... Posted Tuesday, July 06, 2004 10:00 AM by stevencl | 1 Comments Filed under: Usability, API Usability

• Readability vs Writability

  Jay has a great post on readability vs writability. It's really important to take this into account when performing a usability review on an API. Don't just review the code that a developer has to write in order to accomplish a given task with an API. Read More... Posted Friday, July 02, 2004 3:52 PM by stevencl | 3 Comments Filed under: API Usability