Allow me to search for any word in the title

By Adam Cogan in Microsoft 0 Comment

When doing a search, I need to type the exact first few letters to make results appear. It should work for any word/letter present in the title.

Figure: searching for template won’t give me any result

Figure: searching for template won’t give me any result

Figure: I only found it after typing the entire “Do you…” from beginning

Figure: Only found it after typing the entire “Do you…” from beginning

Please improve this search engine to make any typed word to give search results.

Help me to easily find out who created a library/list

By Adam Cogan in SharePoint On Premises 0 Comment
Figure: Who made this?

Figure: Who made this?

Currently, to see who is the author of a library/list like the above, we have two options:

  1. Use SharePoint Manager
    sp-manager
  2. Use PowerShell
    powershell

Both of them are not straightforward, and you have to log on to the server to use either of them.
It costs a few mins and many clicks (not countable) to find out…

The info could be simply exposed to the “list Information” page (can be collapsed by default if there are too much info):

Figure: Add "author" info here

Figure: Add “author” info here

In SharePoint 2016 Preview and Office 365, this has not been improved.

Introduce advanced front-lighting technologies to make driving at night safer

By Adam Cogan in Tesla 0 Comment

BMW = yes (7 series only)
Mercedes = yes (S class only)

Ford is developing a couple of advanced front-lighting technologies to prevent collision and keep drivers safe at night:

  1. The first one called “camera-based advanced front lighting system” interprets traffic signs and use GPS info to widen the headlights’ reach at roundabouts
  2. The second technology called “Spot Lighting” uses an infrared camera attached to the vehicle’s grille to detect people and large animals on the road through their body heat

Watch Ford’s video to see how it works

Tesla should consider adding these to their cars.

Ideally, the driver needs see yellow and red squares flashing up on the heads-up display.

Note: With a software update Tesla could do this if it went in the console

Source: Ford’s high-tech lighting system makes driving at night safer

Adam Cogan reviews the Tesla Model S

By Adam Cogan in Tesla 1 Comment

Adam Cogan takes you through the good and the bad of his 2015 Tesla Model S.

List of things to improve:

  1. Profile – Support for more than 10 users
  2. Centre storage as standard
  3. Back seats – Clips to hang shirts
  4. Pre-installed dashcam
  5. Phone mount
  6. Weight driver to select profile
  7. Keep driver statistics
  8. Cameras above front wheels
  9. Physical button to open front trunk (inside and outside)
  10. Sound to confirm the car is locked
  11. Notifications on phone that windows are down
  12. Add Skype app
  13. Add weather app
  14. Add web browser
  15. Add mail app
  16. Introduce app for Windows Phone *irrelevant
  17. Show which profile used which bluetooth device
  18. Improve updating experience

It would be great if Tesla considered adding this feature to its cars.

Add Popup Notifications to Bootstrap

By Ben Cull in Bootstrap 0 Comment

When you need to alert the user to something, currently you use the .alert component like this:

Figure: .alert .alert-success Looks good, but can only be used inline

I’ve found however, that when you need to alert the user to something that does not have a direct relation to the page you’re on, you need something custom. A great example is successfully achieving something after a postback.

Popup Notifications! Of course, why didn’t I think of that?

It turns out many people have already come to this conclusion as well. Unfortunately, I find their designs too similar to the alert and usually straying from Bootstrap design principles.

Check out an example from my favourite popup notification library (PNotify: http://sciactive.github.io/pnotify/):

Figure: The shadow doesn’t feel right and there’s not much this popup provides that an alert can’t.

I think if Bootstrap were to design a popup notification, it should more closely resemble the desktop notifications of Chrome and Firefox. For Example:

Figure: An example Gmail popup notification

As long as the popups have a call to action, I think that a healthy balance between alert and notification can be reached with a purpose separate to the already existing alert.