So we took it upon ourselves to redesign the country selector.

Using principles of progressive enhancement we turn a standard drop-down into an advanced auto-complete field. This means the drop-down remains accessible, while providing a much better experience in modern browsers – handling typos, multiple spelling sequences, synonyms and prioritization.

While I might use some different language today, this technique I posted in 2004 (inspired by Alexander) is still a major help when I’m designing a UI with many elements to juggle. The reason I come back to it is that it helps me design with language first instead of empty templates. Too often a design starts top-down with empty content areas (maybe a main column and a sidebar) and then we fill those boxes in until its “done.” Filling in the boxes would work fine, except having a bunch of stuff on the page doesn’t mean we served the design goals.

Finally a lightweight accordion that is built with scriptaculous and works properly in every browser.

Spontaneous, unobtrusive usability testing software for designers and developers.

The Google Reader for Wider Screens Greasemonkey script uses all the horizontal space available in GReader for better viewing on wide monitors.

Step out of your problem-solving role Whether we’re improving what we make, how we make it, or how we share it, we normally take the perspective of the creator by default. We can’t help it. We’re drawn into decisions about all sorts of details. We love the minutia—solving problems, finding a way around a limitation. We don’t try to see past our own role in the process. The field of user experience (UX) helps us change that. UX practitioners examine the everyday lives of the people we endeavor to help.

Ubiquity is an experiment two parts. It’s both an interface and a development platform. Ubiquity 0.1 focuses on the platform aspects, while beginning to explore language-driven methods of controlling the browser.

Today we’re announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.