Blogging Roller

John Udell, InfoWorld: Programmer and author Dave Johnson shared an anecdote on his Weblog last year about what happened when his 5-year-old son walked up behind him while he was coding. "He saw the JUnit green bar on the screen," Johnson reports, "and said 'Dad, you did good.'" There's more to this touching father-and-son moment than meets the eye.

I've started to enjoy the java.net blogs and I'm not ashamed to admit that I read them almost daily. I'll be visiting more often as Simon Brown and Alan Williamson have taken up residence there.

Today, I was happy to see Jonathan Simon's list of usability books and websites. My new title is Senior GUI Developer, so I'm getting my re-aquainted with UI design and usability. In fact, my copy of Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability just arrived today. For some odd reason Jonathan did not make the links clickable. That is not very usable now is it? I've taken Jonathan's list and make it clickable for your easy reference:

Jonathon Simon: Here is a list of books that I have found useful.

• Tog on Interface - Bruce Tognazzini
• About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design - Alan Cooper
• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum - Alan Cooper
• Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
• Emotional Design - Don Norman
• The Humane Interface - Jeff Raskin
• Gui Bloopers - Jeff Johnson
• Microsoft Windows User Experience - Microsoft
• Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines - Apple Computer
• Anything by Edward Tufte

And some good links:

• Tognozzini's web site. Great articles.
• Nielsen Norman Group - A top notch consulting firm with some of the best guys around
• Interface Hall of Shame - Great mistakes to show your colleagues about how not to design interfaces.
• ACM UI SIG
• Usability Professionals Assoc. - A great organization for usability professionals

Congratulations to Michael Kelley, who is leaving his position as VP of Development for HAHT Commerce, Inc. and moving to Redmond to join Microsoft. Before joining HAHT in 1996, Michael directed the development of DG/UX Unix at Data General. Rumor has it that he is back in the OS game and will be working on Windows Server. What a catch for Microsoft!

Michael is certainly not the first former HAHT employee to join Microsoft. Many of the original HAHT developers now work for Microsoft, but most are working on webapp testing, next-generation source code control (look out SourceGear), and bug tracking products here in Microsoft's new RTP development center.