Tietoukka's Backstage

Interesting stuff on Facebook AND on Twitter and YouTube

tietoukka — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:01:48 +0000

Some time ago, I wrote about the usability issues related to a large amount of Facebook group memberships.

Roughly similar usability problems exist on many other social websites, too, and I’ve created two more lists. Here are all my lists so far:

You can also follow me on Twitter, or check out my playlists or favorites on YouTube.

Posted in Lists, Usability

Do ads on Facebook irritate the sh*t out of you? Don’t freak out just yet. There are ways to reduce the clutter.

tietoukka — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:03:50 +0000

If you’re a Windows user, follow these easy steps to make a significant portion of the ads invisible:

1. Use the Firefox browser
http://www.mozilla.com/

(If you’re still using Firefox 2.*, don’t delete the self-extracting archive from which you installed it! Just in case you dislike Firefox 3.* as much as I did…)

2. Install the Adblock Plus plugin for Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/1865

This plugin improves your user experience on other websites, too. It doesn’t eliminate Facebook text ads, though; some more tricks are needed:

3a. Install the Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/748

3b. Install the Remove All Facebook Ads script for Greasemonkey
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13787

Check out for possible improved scripts at http://userscripts.org/scripts/search?q=facebook

Also, remember the built-in feature in Firefox that allows you to block images by their source domain! The option is available in the browser’s context-specific menu (right-click with your mouse).

Posted in Usability Tagged: Facebook

My way of dealing with 300+ Facebook Groups

tietoukka — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:46:28 +0000

Facebook lets users create Groups freely, for practically any possible topic. In a way, it’s a reincarnation of Usenet, including that group discussions may be disappointing in their quality, and that there’s a spam problem that is yet to be solved in a satisfying manner. On the funnier side, some Groups have very clever and humoristic names (and even content). Not uncommonly, the mere formal membership is the whole point of being a member of a Group. Group names and memberships are statements. Group membership is one of the easiest forms of self-expression on Facebook.

Except that there are limits.

Currently, Facebook users are allowed to be members of just 300 Groups at a time. If you try to join more, you get the disturbing and disheartening error message “You have too many groups. You must leave one to join this one.” Too many, they say?! I must say that three hundred is not nearly enough!

Another serious flaw in Facebook Groups is that members can’t opt out of mass mail: Either you stay and receive every message from admins to all members, or you leave the Group entirely. How unfortunate to so many basically attractive Groups, that even occasional mass mails can be a major annoyance without it being their own fault. Group mass mails are a problem essentially because the usability of Facebook Messages (an equivalent to web mail) is really poor: users can’t create folders or filters for their incoming messages.

So, how do I deal with my “too many” favourite Facebook Groups?

I’ve created a separate web page, titled “Examples of Facebook Groups“. This page gives me a quick big picture of my personal favourites, and also solves another cluster of usability issues on Facebook, namely the way that Groups are categoricized there. Their way is just as bad and idiosyncratic as any other linear and static classification system. And as if that weren’t bad enough, users can’t even browse their own Groups by category.

In an ideal environment, entities like Facebook Groups might be classified further by admin-assigned tags and dynamic clouds of significant words derived from the content of the Group…

Posted in Information architecture, Usability Tagged: Facebook

Blogger vs. WordPress.com – first impressions

tietoukka — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:33:45 +0000

Blogger pros:: • It seems that you can tweak the CSS of the blog template/theme as much as you like. For example, I started with Rounders and modified it by making the columns wider (so that there’s enough space for 500-pixel-wide images from Flickr), removing the rounded corners, increasing the default font sizes closer to “normal”, and specifying the seriously underused and superiorly legible Georgia as the primary font family.; • You can embed a Google Calendar widget.; • You can redirect your default feed to FeedBurner.

Blogger cons:: • There are no three- or four-column templates/themes available.; • You can’t create static pages for your blog, except a user profile page which is in common to all the Blogger blogs you own.; • You can’t create categories for your posts; you can only tag them.

WordPress.com pros:: • You can use both tags and categories to describe your posts.; • There are half a dozen three-column templates/themes available, and even one with four columns.; • You can create several static pages for your blog.

WordPress.com cons:: • You can’t tweak the CSS of the template/theme at all (unless you pay for it).; • Certain code is entirely forbidden in the content and gets brutally and silently omitted when you try to save your stuff. For example, I wasn’t able to embed the kind of Facebook profile badge I wanted to. Another example is that you can’t embed a Google Calendar widget. I may have found a possible workaround for that, and I may try it at some point later.; • You can’t redirect your default RSS feed to FeedBurner.

New header image

tietoukka — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:30:48 +0000

After all, I couldn’t resist tinkering with the header image… This photo was taken at sunrise in one of those prolonged midsummer evenings that I’ve spent with my dear projects :-)

Layout points of view

tietoukka — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:37:33 +0000

I examined all the available free templates here at WordPress.com, but I wasn’t able to find one that would both be aesthetically pleasing and score high in usability.

This reminds me of those desperate times when I’ve been out shopping for clothes in Helsinki. There’s a reason why most people dress ugly in this town, you know.

So, it’s challenging but not impossible. As to the blog templates, I love the balanced beauty of Fjords04, but keep desiring the usability of Digg 3 Column. I’d really hate to leave the beach (especially now that it reminds me of yesterday’s fantastic evening walk on my local RL beach), but the default font size in Fjords04 is too small and the font colour is mostly in too low a contrast with the background. To put it bluntly, its legibility is poor. Will my readers be willing and able to adjust their browsers?

Maybe I’ll get back to that once this blog has readers other than myself ;-)

In case anyone wants to read a blog which at the first glance looks like the small-print section of a holiday insurance policy :-/

Thankfully, there’s RSS! :-)

Anyway, I’ll be pondering these questions…