Tag Archives: usability

Keyboard shortcuts for Tabs in IE

Posted by on February 14, 2011 No comments

This morning, I was looking for the keyboard shortcut that allows you to switch between different tabs in Internet Explorer. Like ALT+TAB allows you to switch between open windows, CTRL+TAB allows you to switch between open tabs. But there are even more interesting shortcuts I did not know about, like ALT+ENTER. Little things that can save you quite some time. See the list below, taken from the IE Help:

To Press
Open links in a new tab in the background Ctrl while clicking the link
Open links in a new tab in the foreground Ctrl+Shift while clicking the link
Open a new tab in the foreground Ctrl+T or double-click an empty space on the tab row
Open a copy of the current tab in a new tab Ctrl+K
Switch between tabs Ctrl+Tab to move forward or Ctrl+Shift+Tab to move backward
Close the current tab (or the current window when there are no open tabs) Ctrl+W or Alt+F4
Open a new tab in the foreground from the Address bar Alt+Enter
Switch to a specific tab number Ctrl+n (where n is a number between 1 and 8 )
Switch to the last tab Ctrl+9
Close all tabs except for the one you’re viewing Ctrl+Alt+F4
Open Quick Tabs (thumbnail view) Ctrl+Q

The ribbon in SharePoint 2010

Posted by on November 3, 2009 4 comments

As you have probably heard, SharePoint 2010 has a total new interface on the user side: it has the ribbon as we know it from Office 2007.

There are a couple of reasons why this can probably become an issue and will require extra training for your end users:

  • a lot of companies are still running Office 2003, and will probably hold on upgrading until Office 2010 is available. These people have never seen the ribbon before!
  • the ribbon is “security trimmed”, but where in MOSS 2007 any option that you did not have access to was hidden, it is grayed out in SP 2010. This gives some very strange results if you only have read access: you get a ribbon full of disabled buttons.
  • Some functions are less accessible than befor, e.g. the content types. It requires some extra clicks to get where you want.

ribbon

Definitely something to consider when you start planning your end user training!

User interfaces in the future

Posted by on October 14, 2009 No comments

Is this the way we will work with computers in the future? Multi-touch gestures are not new, but this kind of pushes it to the limit:

We are getting pretty close to Minority Report. More info on http://10gui.com. Thanks to Gert for the tip.

User adoption has not changed since the Middle Ages

Posted by on October 2, 2009 No comments

A lot of IT projects fail because users struggle with the change that the new tools bring them. As an IT implementer or trainer, it is good to “unlearn” everything you know about the software, and view it from a user perspective.

The video below shows that what is simple, is not always obvious!

SharePoint Instant List Filter

Posted by on June 7, 2009 3 comments

instantlistfilterI had a great time in my last SharePoint Power User training, and as always, I learned a lot from the questions raised during the course. What do you think about this one: is there a quick and easy way to filter a long SharePoint list, without using Search, without using the column headings or the datasheet view?

I bumped into this nice extension on Codeplex: the SharePoint InstantListFilter. It adds lookup columns at the top of every document library and list, and you can use them to filter the list by typing in them; the results are shown immediately on the screen (jquery).

My development skills are non existing, so I can not evaluate the solution technically, but it is really a lifesaving functionality when you are browsing through long SharePoint lists (especially when there is no metadata or views defined).

Of course, there are some limitations:

  • it only filters in the displayed results
  • it is a feature activated on site level

If you want to see it in action, have a look at the demo.