Review

Yahoo! wallet trouble continues...

CodeCanvas — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 12:59:00 GMT

It was nice to get comments on my previous Yahoo! wallet troubles post, it shows that the trouble is not an isolated incident. What's more annoying? Yahoo's support really sucks and the problem is not fixed yet. As Jasmid Afshar has commented, the security key resetting option no longer works (it has already been 10 days as of this article's date since I submitted a request for key reset - tried 3 times in intervals of 2 days each time).

I guess it looks more like a empty publicity stunt from Yahoo! to advertise about low cost products which they are not ready to sell or Yahoo! wallet is not looking into making profit in the foreseeable future and they too want to have an online store since others are having one!

Thanks for Pearl Fox, Hab, Zach, Jay and Jasmid Afshar for their feedback.

Top 10 usability features I would like in a browser

codecanvas — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:06:00 GMT

After working on net for almost 5 years, I think the key to success of any browser is based on the usability features and improvements done for making them comfortable to users. After thinking over what I have liked in the browsers I have used so far, below is the top 10 key features I would prefer to have in a single browser. Most notably I think these would be a preferred feature for any internet browser user, do let me know your list through feedback

10. Developer tools {Developer’s developer’s developer’s…}
Preferred browser for the feature: Internet Explorer with Developer Toolbar / FireFox with WebDeveloper extension

A developer tool is one thing that's missing greatly from the browser guys. Yea sure there are lot of third party plug ins, but wouldn't it be great if it came directly form them who know the browser better? I appreciate the release of Developer Toolbar for internet explorer and Fiddler by Microsoft; it is a good direction to move on.

9. Look and Feel {Mood simple or not-simple ;)}
Preferred browser for the feature: Firefox

Common guys, we are not in the same mood always. We would need a light-weight skin which is tremendously responsive with least features during the time of work and development. But would need a skin which extends the browser functionality as and when we are in a 'experimenting/exploring' mood. Something like selecting a option like 'Keep it simple' or 'Make it cool' ;)

8. Browsing Session Resume
Preferred browser for the feature: Opera

My regards goes to Opera guys for coming up with the idea / or at least listening to users feedback and implementing it in the product. Resuming a browsing session which consists of more than one window is really a handy feature. Think about this situation; you are at the end of the day and you have opened some pages which are related to what you are hunting and as of yet you don't know which is the exact page that contains the information you need. Now you have to shutdown the system due to some compulsion. What would have been the solution if you don't have session resume? you can either jot down the url's in a text file or make them a bookmark which you need to erase off after verifying, now enter Opera's session resume option where you just close the browser and shut down the system, when you have again started working you can just open the Opera browser and you get an option to resume your previous session! Voila! You get all the sites open for you at the very same page you left them!

7. TLD filling through shortcut {Shift, Ctrl, Enter}
Preferred browser for the feature: Firefox

This is really a necessity now with the amount of browsing anybody is doing on a daily basis. Nobody would be willing to type the mundane "http://" and ".com"or".net" or whatever TLD for browsing these days. Internet explorer introduced this nifty shortcut where you use the Ctrl+Enter to fill in on the needed stuff for ".com" domains, Firefox went ahead and introduced extended shortcuts for some more (Ctrl+Enter -> .com, Shift+Enter -> .net, Shift+Ctrl+Enter -> .org)

6. Disabling Images / Multimedia Items {Movies on advertisement??? sheeez}
Preferred browser for the feature: Netscape

My most hated stuff while browsing is some site using up your bandwidth for unwanted ads! When you are browsing a site text ads are fine, image ads.... well, that is fine unless it hinders with the purpose of visit, flash ads with movies in them?? Common people, this is not going to suit me and that's the main reason I select to disable images, java applets and other multimedia plug-ins until unless I need them. This feature is kind of half implemented in the current browsers. The main problem in mentioning that images are not to be loaded is fine, but there are some sites for which images are required. For viewing images on those sites the only option with the current browsers is to enable images at browser level, which is not convenient. I love Netscape on this matter that they allow you to set the images / JavaScript’s to be enabled and disabled on the fly when visiting a site.

5. Smart Pop-up blocking and download management
Preferred browser for the feature: Firefox

Pop-up blocking is almost a standard feature in all the current version of the browsers; even then there is some area for improvement. I have come across sites which have effectively bypassed the blockers and have opened pop-ups and pop-under [I forgot the link, will post them. I think it was a movie review site, which I reached through Google search]. And the current pop-up blocking mechanism in Netscape is bit old fashioned, wherein you don't have any option to open a blocked window, and moreover if you are browsing your hotmail junk folder (in IE Rendering Mode) with Netscape it blocks the "Empty" commands pop-up screen (I also tried with Ctrl, Shift keys pressed down).

4. Paste and Go {Well, you paste something on the address bar to actually go there!!}
Preferred browser for the feature: Opera

This feature is so obvious in its level of usage; I wonder why most of the browsers have not implemented it yet. Well, consider this; you paste something in the address bar of a browser to actually visit that address right? Then why don't they give an option (KB shortcut or right-click menu item) to actually paste and go the address in one command? This feature is one of those usability gems from Opera.

3. Tabbed Browsing
Preferred browser for the feature: Mostly all browsers have opted in on this feature

Even though most of the browsers have opted in on this feature there is still some area for improvement on most of them. For example there is tab functionality that is available on Netscape that are not available with Firefox and Opera (double click closing).

2. Multi-level form information storing / submiting {Not another login screen}
Preferred browser for the feature: Netscape

More or less all browsers support automatic form filling either as built-in feature or through extensions. But where Netscape stands out is the amount of flexibility it gives you in form information saving. The user can choose to just save the information or save the information and auto-fill it whenever we come to the form on the web site or if it’s a login screen you can ask it to automatically fill the form and then submit the form too. And this kind of information saving is done through two level of visibility, either for a particular web site or for a default profile which will be available for all the websites. But even Netscape lacks one functionality, you can save only one set of login information for any website, so if you have different email ids for personal and professional use with the same email service provider, then you will have determine which one you are going to save in the browser for auto-login.

The main reason this feature has come up on the ladder is because how easy it makes you to use various online service with minimum typing :)

1. Response and True Status {Click ... click ... hmmmm .. i think its connecting...!!??}
Preferred browser for the feature: Opera (kind of)

This is one area where most browsers have to work extra. As far as I know still there are some glitches in the existing browsers where you get into response issues, I understand it may be associated with scripts running on a page or any other resource hog up. But at the end of it this is the one feature which will either create a smile or a frown on a users face.

As such I use/experience IE, Firefox, Opera and Netscape one daily basis for my development and testing, so my opinions are based on the experience I have gained out of these browsers. There maybe better alternatives which the users like me may not be aware of, in such cases please do let me know about them through the feedback section.

Yahoo! Wallet Troubles

CodeCanvas — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 15:29:00 GMT

[Update 3rd Sep 2005 1629 IST (GMT +0530 hrs): Yahoo no longer has $1.99 domain registration offer.]

It is really a exciting day for me! you see, it all started when I heard about yahoo offering domain registration for $1.99 (info from Sören 'chucker' Kuklau), I was very excited and opted to the yahoo page for registering my wanted domain name. After searching through the domain availability and getting over the fact that the .com version has already been taken, I choose .net tld and opted to book it for 5 years. This took me to Yahoo wallet, which asks for the CC details which I was more than happy to provide, but only if yahoo is ready to proceed further my day would have been more happier.

To clarify, there isn't any problem with the card (as I have purchased products online before and also yahoo does not complain about the card) but the only issue is that I really don't know what the issue is!

Well, let me explain in more detail now, once you reach the CC section and provide your information and press the "Continue" button all you get is a refreshed screen of the CC entry page! No errors, no information why I am still stuck there, but simply it does not proceed further. To make sure that I am able to get error message I wantedly emptied some mandatory fields and pressed continue for which there was a yellow colored error message box shown by yahoo, but when all are filled and ready it just simply doesn't proceed further.

After digging around for 10 min's, I found that the 'State' drop down list was showing US based states instead of India based states. Well, I tried

changing to a different country and then back to India
opened the wallet in different browsers (opera, IE, FF, Netscape)
cleared my cookies / temp internet files and such and did the above two points again

Finally I went to Yahoo India and searched for wallet service localized for that region, but couldn't find any and now wondering what other options I have.

I personally think small(?) hitches like this are the ones which makes the difference in experience between service which attracts users to use it and a service which forces a user to use it because he/she does not have any other option other than to compromise on comfortability for getting what he/she wants.

Finally, as of now I am planning to drop this non-ending madness to try to figure out a way and make use of godaddy. My only disadvantage would be that I could have booked the same domain for 5 years instead of less than that, if only yahoo had worked!

'Personally' google feed reader works and yahoo does not!

codecanvas — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:18:00 GMT

[Update 8th Sep 2005, 1835 hrs IST (GMT + 0530 hrs)]: Yahoo 360 works fine with the given URL ( http://vganesh.geekswithblogs.net/Rss.aspx ), and now I am able to get the feeds. Thanks Yahoo!

Okay, currently i am using both the personalization option offered by google and yahoo. The first thing I noticed on both of them is the difference in ability to parse my feed in their feed aggregators. While google has no problem in parsing http://vganesh.geekswithblogs.net/Rss.aspx but yahoo 360 (Feeds (via RSS)) complains (Error: We were unable to fetch the feeds you requested. Please check the URL's and try again.)and does not parse the given URL. I tried even my blogspot feed, uhhmm! it doesn't work. Do anybody have experience with making yahoo feed reader work?