Please. Fix. That.

Web video players: stay in full-screen, please

Our family cut the cable TV cord years ago. Not that we don't watch TV anymore today. We just leverage our Internet service for it now, shown on the big screen via a Mac mini. This means using a combination of services (some paid, some free): Netflix, Hulu and iTunes mostly, but we also watch some TV shows on the network's site. See, some networks are doing their own thing instead of allowing Hulu to host their shows. This fragmentation is an annoyance, something that apps like Boxee are trying to fix (but so far, not quite there).

One of the networks doing their own thing is CBS. There's really only one show we watch on CBS today: CSI (original series only). The CBS video player is better than most self-run network video players — video quality is good, the CBS logo is relatively small and not obnoxious. But the commercials are the problem.

It's not the quantity of commercials — typically just one or two during a break — but some escape out of the full screen mode when playing the show. This happens with ads that have a mix of images and interactive elements. And when those ads end, the episode you're viewing resumes, but it's no longer shown full-screen.

I realize that there are limitations in place for Flash that prevents a Flash object from switching to full-screen mode programmatically. A user has to deliberately click on the full-screen button to cause that transition to occur. And if you think pop-ups and pop-unders are bad, imagine not having that protection... web ads would be taking over your screen all the time (so thanks for that, Adobe).

CBS should take a closer look at how Hulu does this. Hulu will sometimes show an interactive ad during a commercial break, but you never leave full-screen mode. That's because the ad is still all-flash, not a web and Flash hybrid ad. So there is no transition out of full-screen. It makes for a much better viewing experience. Remember folks, TV viewing is supposed to be as passive as possible.

So CBS (and many others, such as the player at cwtv.com, which deserves a much longer post all to itself), please fix that.

 

iCal: Those pesky date/time fields

UPDATE: This issue has been somewhat improved upon with Mac OS X Lion. iCal now has a "quick add" button that lets you enter the initial date/time of an event as a phrase. However, editing an existing event uses the same old data entry UI described below. So I can't really say this has been fixed just yet.

UPDATE: OS X Mountain Lion changed the UI for editing date and time fields slightly. The presentation makes it appear that you're editing a single field for each date (instead of three fields per date -- day, month, year). The data entry is still constricted to each component of the date or time. What I would really like to see is support for free-form date entry. So you could just type in "Tuesday" for example, and it would select the next Tuesday relative to today. Entering dates is somewhat easier with the new UI, but not as easy as it could be.

Most of the posts on this site can be classified into two broad categories. There are posts about bugs that break the functionality of an application. These are generally obvious to any user and are not controversial: they need to be fixed.

The other category includes posts about usability problems and design flaws. These are a little more subjective and may be less obvious to some. This post falls into this latter category.

I use iCal a lot and run into this bit of interface all the time (iCal, Mac OS X 10.6.7 pictured):

I'm specifically calling out the "from" and "to" fields of this new event window. Each of these fields has six text fields within it. One for the month, day, year, hour, minute and AM/PM selection. Because of this, entering data into the "from" and "to" fields is tedious.

In recent releases of Mac OS X, Apple has tried to eliminate this problem by offering other means of creating events. You can create an event from an email message, for instance. If the Mail application detects a date somewhere in the body of a message, it will underscore it. You then click this link to be given the option of creating a new event with that date pre-entered for you.

That's a useful trick, but it makes me wonder why it isn't used in iCal itself. Instead of a field made up of six smaller fields, why not have a simple text field you can use to enter a full date. Picture this with me: currently, to enter an end date that may be on May 3, you have to click on the month part of the "to" field, then type "5", then either press the tab key or click into the day part of the "to" field and type "3".

Alternatively, if the "to" field were a simple text field, you could click on it, write "5/3" and you're done. iCal can figure out the rest. Or, you could write "tomorrow". Or "next thu". Remember, Mac OS X already has data-detection logic for finding dates in free-form text... why not re-use it in the app that is all about dates?

This is not a bug — the existing interface works, but it's clunky. This is a usability issue, and one that is tractable. Lets hope Apple decides to fix it. (Oh, and this is not a new idea by any means... a number of calendar tools support natural language entry of dates like this, such as Google Calendar.)

iPad: No way to disable Calendar alerts

UPDATE: This has been addressed in iOS 5 with the introduction of the iOS Notification Center preferences. You can now disable alerts for Calendars in general!

I've searched high and low for a way to disable Calendar alerts on my iPad but have come up empty handed. So, time for a new post!

There doesn't seem to be a way to disable these alerts. You can disable the alert sound (through Settings → General → Sounds) but you will still get an alert window to remind you of the same event that you were just reminded of on your computer and iPhone.

Observed in iOS 4.3.1 (and presumably, every version prior).

iPad App Store: Font size glitch during animation

Update: Fixed with the adoption of slide navigation. Sliding through pages of apps doesn't cause this glitch.

Another super-micro, insignificant thing to post about, but here we are.

I've tried to capture this one in video since it involves animation (an iPhone video here). The quality is so-so, but you can also observe it first-hand on your iPad, if you have one. Watch the app title in the upper-left. It will shrink in height by a pixel or so before the animation to the next page begins, then grows by a pixel after it ends.

 

Once you've seen it happen, you can't ignore it and it will bug you until Apple fixes it. So, beware!

Observed on iOS 4.3.1 and many, many prior releases.