Phelan Riessen » usability

Outlook Calendar Recurrence Problem

phelan — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 20:08:47 +0000

Creating events in Outlook calendar works fine on my Dell laptop. Editing the event after posting it the first time creates a huge bug which I blamed MS Outlook for the last couple of years. Basically Outlook automatically posts the same event recurring every day for an infinite amount of time. THIS DROVE ME NUTS! But apparently not enough to simply Google it and find the solution. I finally found it and apparently it was Dell all along to blame. Grrrr…

Here’s the solution posted on Egghead Cafe. If you own a Dell and have Outlook 2003, you probably have this problem. Simply uninstall “outlookaddinsetup” from your programs list and you’re good to go. Special thanks to Google Suggest which provides key terms you may not ordinarily think of and Graeme who took the time and found a fix for Outlook’s recurrence problem.

Another not so good user experience

phelan — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:43:16 +0000

One doesn’t have to travel too far on the Internet to find all kinds of usability wonkiness. However large corporate sites should have enough resources to make the user experience a good one. Recently, I was researching for mobile affiliates and came across AT-T’s affiliate page so I promptly filled out the request form to be an affiliate. What I got for the confirmation page was surprising or worse yet absolutely the most uneventful thank you page ever. The registration form sends a request but the confirmation page is its own page. The only way you can tell if it worked or not is when you refresh the page and it asks if you want to resend form data. Thanks AT-T for the uneventful affiliate confirmation request with nary a thank you page or even a friendly email confirmation. Don’t mind me as I spam your form until I get approved or get my IP address banned from your site. You should be able to do a little better than this.

Worst. Confirmation. Page. Ever.

phelan — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:34:16 +0000

If you’ve ever made a change of address on the California DMV website you’ll know what I’m talking about. For such an important website and especially for something that involves changing such crucial information you’d think they would have a better thank you confirmation page then this. Seriously.