#newnewtwitter Mobile: UX clangers are just the beginning…

By marty | Published: December 18, 2011

So I’ve been using Twitter’s mobile website for a while and it’s been updated a number of times, most recently a few months ago. There was no fanfare until just recently when #newnewtwitter was announced and it became clear that the current look was part of this redesign effort. What surprises me is that this site has 4 fundamental issues that irritate the hell out of me: default landing page; unauthenticated requests for restricted pages; language settings, and; picture links go to normal website.

Some background…

The UX issues (default landing page; unauthorised request for restricted page) have been particularly highlighted to me as I use an old work phone that I have lying around for want of something better. The sad part of this bit of the story is that the phone is running Windows Mobile 6.5. The tragic part of the story is that if you load any decent sized web page it deletes all cookies (I know, I know, #firstworldproblems). So while the UX issues might mildly annoy a normal user, losing the cookies and being repeatedly forced to re-authenticate makes the clangers really obvious and turns the rage up to 11.

Default landing page…

What is the more common task a user of a service is going to perform: registering an account or logging in? For everyone but a spammer the ratio will be 1 to “some really large number”. For a mobile site, where the user is more likely to have registered via other means already, the score will be more commonly 0 to “some really large number”. Common sense would indicate that your default landing page should be for the most common task, so present the user with a login form. Twitter have chosen to make the default landing page their registration form. Logging in requires following a link to the login form. Perhaps Twitter has some A/B testing that indicates this leads to more registrations but for existing users it just seems to be “pessimised” for the most common task.

Unauthenticated requests for restricted pages…

Most sites, when a user requests a restricted page before they have authenticated, have a fairly straight forward and smooth method of handling this.

  1. User requests a restricted page without being authenticated.
  2. Show the user a login form or redirect them to the login page.
  3. After successful authentication redirect the user back to the page they originally requested.

Twitter, in their wisdom, has chosen a different method for their mobile site.

  1. User requests a restricted page without being authenticated.
  2. Redirect the user to the registration page.
  3. User has to click through to the login page.
  4. After successful authentication redirect the user to the first page of their timeline.
  5. User has to manually navigate back to the page they originally requested.

Language settings…

Twitter’s mobile site ignores your language settings and uses geo-location of your IP address to select which language to display.

Picture links go to the normal website…

Don’t get me started on Twitter’s t.co self-serving service, and I know Twitter has no control over other links in tweets, but when someone has uploaded a picture to their pic.twitter.com service they haven’t bothered to offer a mobile friendly way of viewing those pictures, even if you a clicking through from their mobile site. I’m sure newer phones cope better with this but Opera on Windows Mobile 6.5 chokes horribly when presented with the main Twitter website.

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Great NANOG presentations

By marty | Published: October 17, 2011

I was reminded by @dritans tweet that there a lot of great NANOG presentations which tend to get buried amongst the archives.

The particular one he linked to is A Practical Guide to (Correctly) Troubleshooting with Traceroute [222KB PDF] by Richard A Steenbergen. This is a terrific primer for those who have never dug deep into traceroute tools, how they work and what they can show you. It’s quite easy to misinterpret what a traceroute tool’s results actually mean and RAS steps you through the various anomalies and pitfalls.

The complexity covered here is why asking job candidates about traceroute tools is a great way to expose understanding of, or ignorance of, the basics of packet switched networks, IP and TCP/UDP/ICMP. You can also learn a lot about their approach to troubleshooting and analysis of data, whether they can turn it into useful information and communicate that.

The other presentation I was reminded of is Managing IP Networks with Free Software [400KB PDF] by Joe Abley and Stephen Stuart. It’s getting on a bit, NANOG 26 was in late 2002, but it’s still an interesting showcase of how you can get [nearly] instant results with some simple tools and a little scripting.

I’d like to say that things have changed in the decade since and we now have a one size fits all tool that achieves a lot of the same goals but due to every organisation’s different needs everyone keeps reinventing subtly different wheels. Hence I’ve been down the same path, installing RANCID and then building things around it. I just wish I’d known about textfsm, a Python module for parsing semi-structured text (e.g. ‘show run’ output) into tabular data.

Do you have any favourite NANOG presentations?

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Running RANCID on top of BZR and with multihop

By marty | Published: November 24, 2009

Long time, no write. Been busy moving countries, as you do.

Started a new job too. Been setting up RANCID and wanted to pull together all the pieces here:

RANCID
Let’s start in the obvious place, www.shrubbery.net/rancid/. I prefer my own, slightly different, expansion of the acronym. Really Awesome Network  ConfIg Differ. If you are not backing up or versioning the configuration of your networking equipment you really should take a look at it.

Patches for RANCID to use BZR
RANCID only offers CVS and SVN support out of the box. I’ve been using BZR for a while and strongly prefer it. Thankfully someone has provided patches to add BZR support.

Patches for RANCID to do multihop
One of the other things I needed to add was support to reach a device via another device. I used the instructions from here and the updated patch from here. My config looks a little something like:

add user HOSTNAME {USER}
add password HOSTNAME {PASSWORD}
add autoenable HOSTNAME 1
add method HOSTNAME usercmd
add usercmd HOSTNAME {/usr/local/rancid/bin/clogin} {VIA_HOSTNAME}
add usercmd_chat HOSTNAME {#} {telnet IP_ADDRESS\r} {User Access Verification} {}

Note that the host we are going via is already defined so we can reuse it’s clogin details to reach it (though I did need to provide the full path to clogin).

Loggerhead
To serve the BZR repo via a web interface I turned to Loggerhead. The only issue I have is trying to hide the RANCID log directory because I am serving it as a “directory of branches” straight out of rancid/var.

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Series of Scalability Articles by Haytham El-fadeel

By marty | Published: April 20, 2009

As the title says…

Art of scalability (1) – Scalability principles

Art of scalability (2) – Scalability guidelines part 1

Art of scalability (3) – Scalability guidelines part 2

Art of scalability (4) – Scalability guidelines part 3

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Bernadette McMenamin applying the spin, again…

By marty | Published: February 5, 2009

Australian IT is carrying a blog post by Bernadette McMenamin which is just full of mis-representation and spin.

One of the most horrendous developments that we have experienced in the last 15 years is the dramatic explosion in the global trade of child sexual abuse images on the internet.

No one really knows the true quantities because it is mostly traded via peer to peer and over encrypted networks. And none of these channels will be addressed by the proposed filter. Ref: http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html#s_stats

76 per cent would change to an ISP that blocked child pornography

There are ISPs that provide filtered access already, yet their market share is not overly large so while the polls track the sentiment it doesn’t appear to flow through to action. Markets respond to demand, it’s clearly not there. Ref: http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html#s_10

Law enforcement and education are also key strategies and prominent in the Federal Government’s Safe internet Policy.

So why is the AFP budget for this going down and not up? Ref: http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html#s_38

Hundreds of millions of dollars is already being spent on law enforcement which is commendable but this only addresses the problem after the abuse has occurred.

ISP filtering has the same problem.

Critics of this new scheme have argued that ISP filtering of child sexual abuse images simply will not work. However these filters are actually working very effectively in Scandinavian countries and in the UK as well as in recent trials in New Zealand.

None of these examples is representative of what the ALP is proposing. Ref: http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html#s_6

Critics have also argued that ISP filtering will be costly and slow down the internet. Again based on overseas experience this is not the case.

The New Zealand trial is not equivalent to what the ALP is proposing. Nor does it refute the view that the filtering will slow access speeds.

My argument is that how can blocking illegal material (which should not be produced or stored in the first place) be censorship?

And many, if not all, would agree with you. But the ALP is proposing to block prohibited material not all of which is illegal. Ref: http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html#s_21

Having said that I remain open minded as I hope the critics of the scheme will wait until the trials have been independently conducted to decide on whether Australia should take this leap into ISP filtering.

I think we’re all keen to see the results of the trials. Just have to wait till they are completed…

…any minute now…

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Links of the Day: December 25, 2008

By marty | Published: December 25, 2008

Gapingvoid: Guy with office job

Gapingvoid: Small shitty moment

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Links of the Day: December 18, 2008

By marty | Published: December 18, 2008

Rolling Your Own Newsroom – O’Reilly Radar

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Links of the Day: October 19, 2008

By marty | Published: October 19, 2008

Simon Caulkin: High earners need to be brought down to Earth

The credit crunch has written it out in huge red letters: incentive pay may work for Chinese peasants, but in situations of any complexity, and especially where the quality of the decisions made is only apparent in the long term, pay that truly reflects performance is not only unachievable: the attempt to make it so is catastrophically counter-productive.

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Links of the Day: October 12, 2008

By marty | Published: October 12, 2008

Sad Guys on Trading Floors – And if you look over here, you’ll see we have some…
…little do they know it’s the Australian Treasurer!

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Links of the Day: September 30, 2008

By marty | Published: September 30, 2008

Real Dan Lyons Web Site – What the hell is happening to me?

For the first time ever, I agree with something Richard Stallman says.

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