Ontem necessitei de fazer uma encomenda no site da FNAC, mas não foi propriamente fácil. Fiquei frustrado o suficiente para lhes enviar um e-mail para o Apoio a Clientes.
Bom dia.
Acabei agora de realizar uma encomenda na loja online, e há algumas coisas que não percebo. Primeiro tive bastantes dificuldades em realizar a encomenda devido a questões de usabilidade: Ao seleccionar como local de entrega uma loja FNAC, as caixas de texto para expedição (morada, código postal, etc) ficaram inactivas (o que é espectável). No entanto permaneceram com preenchimento obrigatório, o que me obrigou a mudar o local de entrega para "Morada", preencher tudo, e só aí escolher a loja para entrega…
Quando é aberto o formulário para expedição, no envio para morada apenas aparece a opção de recepção das 9 às 18 horas, só preenchendo os diversos campos aparece a opção das 19 às 22h. Ora além da falta de
transparência para o utilizador, ainda se arriscam a perder encomendas por falta desta informação. Finalmente no pagamento, é-me pedido o NIB, o qual copio da minha aplicação de e-banking e colo na caixa de texto.
Recebo uma mensagem de "NIB incorrecto" à qual não é anexada qualquer informação do formato esperado, depois de tirar espaços, o código do país e os digitos finais de checkdigit, lá consegui submeter o pedido.
Têm sorte que não desisti a meio. Por fim em vez de uma mensagem de "Compra efectuada com sucesso, vá ao seu e-mail" tenho o carrinho vazio, levando-me a pensar que tinha perdido o processo de encomenda.
Aconselhava seriamente a uma revisão da usabilidade do vosso site.
Com os melhores cumprimentos,
Bruno Silva
Foram simpáticos o suficiente para responderem a pedir desculpas e a dizerem que se encontravam com “problemas técnicos”… Era o que esperava, mas pelo menos despejei a frustração! 
Também achei curioso dizerem que estavam totalmente disponíveis para mais esclarecimentos, e de seguida me fecharem o ticket no sistema deles. lol
I’ve previously written that I was using Wordpress PDA Plugin in order to give mobile users a nice user experience. Today during lunch time I’ve upgraded the plugin which now has a iPhone/iPod version. (I must give a word of appreciation to the new “one click upgrade” feature in Wordpress)
It has animations in page transitions and all. Pretty cool. It still have some bugs (at least when testing it in Firefox with a fake User Agent), but it is usable. Maybe one of my readers will give me feedback from his iPhone experience navigating in this website.
In my daily work It is quite usual facing applications and websites which have what I consider some usability issues (including projects in which I have worked, its true). It is so common that I’ve decided to start posting some thoughts about usability using examples that cross my path.
I am not and usability expert and what I will post may not be accepted by usability experts or by any person at all. I’ll just write about things that annoy me and which I think that should be different. So, if you think that I am not right about something, just comment the correspondent post. This way I can get different points of view and learn about usability from you.
Today while using Live Mesh Remote Desktop I noticed something. While the ActiveX is connecting to your remote computer you get a loading screen. You have a “Cancel” button in order to cancel (how obvious is that caption 
). In the button’s normal state you can see a “Cancel” message below the loading animation, but you don’t really notice it is a button until you put your mouse over it.
If it is a button, I think it should look like a button before I try to click it (this is the moment when I need to know that it is a button). Or at least it could resemble like a link, which would have the same effect. Since Live Mesh is still a Tech Preview, maybe this usability issue will not be present on the final release.
As I have said before my favorite browser is Firefox. And my current operating system is Windows Vista Ultimate. They work well together, but visually I think that Firefox doesn’t fit that well. When you have Aero turned on it is even worse. I would like to make Firefox look a little bit more like IE7 on Vista. And now it does! The picture bellow shows how nice it looks now and it’s perfect fit with Windows Explorer.
How can you achieve the same result? By taking advantage of the great customization features of Firefox!
First of all I installed Glasser which is an experimental Firefox add-on that adds the Windows Vista glass frame to Firefox toolbars.
The next step is to customize other visual settings. I was surprised to find out the Firefox theming is based on CSS, so you can adjust a lot of the look’n'feel of your favorite browser like you were styling a webpage. A great add-on that can help you with this task is Stylish. It allows you to manage several stylesheets files, by adding new ones, activating/deactivating the existing ones (with preview) and even editing the files manually.
Obviously you don’t have do write your own stylesheets from scratch. There is a huge (or at least decent) database of stylesheet files for Firefox that can be found at userstyles.org. It has not only styles for your browser but also for specific websites like Gmail, Google Reader, etc.
Here’s a list of user styles that I used to accomplish the final result shown in the image above.
FF3+Glasser: Vista OS integration - Gives the IE7-like look to the address bar and back/forward buttons
Firefox 3 Glasser Padder - Just gives a little space to the main toolbar, not required.
Hide Home-button text on the Bookmarks Toolbar - If you want the Home button in the address toolbar without the “Home” text, you can use this style.
Native-looking progress meter for Fission ext - Makes the progress bar green and glossy like the Windows Explorer progress bar (e.g. folder search progress bar). You must use it with Fission add-on which puts the progress bar behind the address bar, otherwise it doesn’t have any effect.
I used an add-on in order to add a “New tab” button next to the last open tab, on the tab bar.
Personal Menu add-on allows you to transfer the main menu items to a single button that you can put in any toolbar. It is the last button next to my bookmarks. Using this add-on you can get rid of the main menu, but have it easily accessible whenever you need it.
The best of all is that since I am using a portable version of Firefox 3, I won’t lose any customizations even if I format my computer, or move into another one.
Feel free to ask any questions regarding the customizations I’ve done to Firefox.
De 25.000 pontos para 75.00 ainda vai um bocado. 
Descoberto a navegar no site XBox Live ao trocar a lingua de pt-PT para en-US.
