I bought this book when it first came out in 2000, since then, hundreds of thousands of Web designers and developers have relied on usability guru Steve Krug’s guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design.
On the back of the book the publisher says “Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on the subject. Now Steve returns with fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don’t Make Me Think a classic–with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read. If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web designers and developers around the world. If you’ve never read it, you’ll see why so many people have said it should be required reading for anyone working on Web sites.
STEVE KRUG managed to labor happily in near-total obscurity as a highly respected usability consultant until the publication of the first edition of Don” t Make Me Think. Ten years later, he finally gathered enough energy to write another book: the usability testing handbook Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-ItYourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems. The books were based on the 2o+ years he’s spent as a usability consultant for a wide variety of clients like Apple, Bloomberg.com, I.exus.com, NPR, the International Monetary Fund, and many others. His consulting firm, Advanced Common Sense, is based in Chestnut Hill, MA. Steve currently spends most of his time teaching usability workshops, consulting, and watching black-and-white movies from the ‘3os and ‘4os. “
I haven’t had a chance to look at the new edition yet but on the basis that the original became a classic I would highly recommend this for any web developers, mobile app developers or others involved in User Experience design (UX).
Update: December 24th 2018: As a Christmas present for 2018 Channel 4 have just released their brilliant All4 App on the Apple TV. I’ve watched a few programmes on it so far. I’m really impressed with the picture and sound quality, ease of use and can’t fault it. So well worth the wait and thanks C4. I’ve now got loads of programmes to catch-up on.
The previous version of this post:
If you are looking for the Channel 4 app for the new Apple TV then this blog post is for you. We explain how to use your Apple device to watch Channel 4, 4 On Demand, 4E, More 4, Film 4 etc using the All 4 App.
Currently Channel 4 don’t have a native iOS App for Apple TV but the good news is that they do have a really good iOS App for the iPhone, iPad and iPod. It’s easy to port these apps to the Apple TV so it should only be a matter of time before they get around to supporting the Apple TV as well. Luckily in the meantime the iPhone, iPad and iPod App works really well with the Apple TV 3rd and 4th generation.
You’ll need to install the 4OD App on your iPhone/iPad. You can find this in the App Store on your device by just searching for 4OD.
You will then need to start the app and register if you don’t already have a user id and password with C4.
You can then search for and play the programme you want to watch.
When the programme starts to play you just need to swipe up from the bottom of the screen. You will then see the control panel shown below. Press the AirPlay icon.
Now pick your Apple TV from this list of AirPlay devices. Your programme will now start to play on your Apple TV.
How do I get 4 On-Demand (4OD) on my TV?
Most TV sets sold in the last five years have some way to connect to the Internet and then download apps which allow you to view on-demand services such as Four On-Demand and BBC iPlayer. This is perhaps the easiest way to get access to 4OD, however in my experience the Apps which are built into TV sets themselves and the online functions in TV sets are poor quality, slow and difficult to use. The processor, memory and operating system in TV sets tends to be the equivalent of a ten-year-old mobile phone – at best!
I recommend the Apple TV box for access to online services from your TV. This has many advantages. Apple really focuses on ease of use and security. As far as I am aware there have been no reports of an Apple TV ever being hacked or affected by malware whereas even TV sets from some big-name manufacturers have been proven capable of spying on you in your own home.
The Apple TV is really easy to set-up. You just plug it into the mains, connect it to your TV using an HDMI cable and then if you have an iPhone you can tap the phone on top of it and it will copy over all your WiFI and Apple iCloud settings.
Once you have this up and running you can just pop into the App Store and download the Channel Four On Demand App.
If you have any questions about which Apple TV to buy for your requirements or how to get it set-up do please leave a question below and I’ll be pleased to help.
I thought I’d post a quick update to show what Apple TV looks like in the UK and in particular what the ITV Hub app looks like. To watch ITV on your Apple TV you need to go into the App Store. This is the big blue icon on the third row down on the right-hand side with a white A. On your Apple TV this will be in a slightly different location but will be the same icon. Go into this and then look through the top free apps and you’ll see ITV Hub. Just select this and download it. The ITV Hub App will then be added to your home screen as shown below. Just use the remote to click on this and off you go. If you have any questions about getting this working or your Apple TV in general just post a question below and I’ll do my best to get back to you.
Update: Jan 2019: Just revisiting some of my old blog posts to update them. In 2018 ITV finally released a native app for the Apple TV. This works really well. So now to watch programmes from ITV on Apple TV you just need to go to the App Store, search for ITV and then install the app/
Update: Jan 2nd 2017: In a recent update ITV has blocked you from mirroring the output to the Apple TV. We can only imagine that they have some rights issues with various content owners that prevent them from allowing us to do this. We suggest you email ITV and let them know how hard they are making it for us to watch their programmes. It would also be worth complaining to Apple as they should be doing more with the UK based channels to get their content onto their platform.
At the time of writing ITV have launched their new ITV Hub App on the iTunes store. This is the ITV equivalent of the BBC iPlayer. Currently, the ITV Hub App only works on iPhone and iPad and they haven’t released a version for the Apple TV. This shouldn’t be more than a few days development works for them so we hope they will get on and do it soon. In the meantime, you can use the ITV Hub App on your iPhone and mirror it onto your Apple TV.
It’s often useful to keep an eye on what’s trending on Twitter but in the latest versions of the iPhone Twitter App it’s not immediately obvious where to find what’s trending.
It’s actually really simple when you know.
At the top of your timeline screen just under where is says Home you’ll see 3 little dots. This is an iPhone App standard way to say that there’s more to see if you swipe left. The trick is to swipe left as shown by the arrow on one of the tweets not on the header itself.
Once you’ve swiped left you’ll see the ‘What’s Trending’ screen:
You can then click on one of the hashtags to see what people are saying or return to your hime page by swiping right or just press the timelines button.
I needed to secure a copy of an old blog site before we started redeveloping it. I’d always assumed that in Mac Safari there was an option to not only download a page but also all the attached pages but there isn’t. I couldn’t believe it and so googled it and found that sure enough Safari doesn’t support downloading an entire site.
I was sure that someone else must have already solved this problem so I looked around the Mac App Store. I couldn’t find anything that would do this initially. Then I came across an App called Kiosk Monster. This is designed to download a website to your Mac Laptop so that you can take it to trade shows / opens days etc and run it in kiosk mode. That means that it’s secured or locked down so that people can click around the website you’ve downloaded but they can’t go to other websites or indeed start messing about with your Mac. That’s actually really useful and I’m sure I’ll use it from time to time but the added bonus is that to achieve this the app does download the entire site to your Mac.
It wasn’t obvious to start with whereabouts the app was storing the downloaded site. With a little research I discovered that for each site it downloads it creates a new directory in ~\Library\Application Support\KioskMonster so from there you can backup or copy the website to wherever you want to store it.
