Ever tried to browse on a phone with a touch screen and felt the urge to use a pencil sharpener on you finger to be able to click links? Or wanted to throw your phone out the window when you realized that you yet again managed to click the wrong link despite carefully aiming with that one nail that is a millimeter longer than the others? Opera has now introduced a feature called Opera
Fingertouch that will take all your frustrations away.

In short, it grows links that you tap close to if there are multiple links nearby. You can then easily tap the link you wanted to open. It also makes form controls bigger and easier to interact with. So to sum up more user friendly browsing on touch devices.

But I might be a little biased so see for yourself :). If you have an UIQ phone you will find a beta version available for download. For the ones without a UIQ device there is a YouTube video you can take a look at.

Lets try to warm up my blogging skills with a little bit of bitching...

Have you ever heard anyone mention something called top posting vs. bottom posting? Chances are rather high that your answer is «No». That is if you live in the real world...

Did you know there is a whole little world of super geeks out there that have religious rules about what is right and wrong when it comes to how you should reply to e-mails? Did you realize that you might have made someone see red and shout at his computer screen that you are stupid because you replied to their e-mail in the "wrong" way?

I am pretty sure that when you reply to an e-mail, that you simply hit reply and type your response at the top. And that if you get a long e-mail and there is no text in black at the top that you might wonder if people accidentally hit the send button before they had written their response. You might maybe start a long, half-hearted, annoying scroll to the bottom...

The main e-mail fundamentalist commandment is: Thou shalt not post your response at the top of the e-mail but rather in between old content and at the bottom.

Just like any other "good" religious fundamentalist, the e-mail fundamentalist will try to force feed their views on you. They will first start out by making hidden condescending remarks on how stupid and ignorant you are. When that isn't understood they will tell you right out that you are pissing them off by being ignorant about e-mail manners. A normal person might at first simply lift their shoulders and respond "but it is so much simpler to just respond at the top and then I don't need to scroll". This is when the e-mail fundamentalist will give you an example that explains to you that you cannot easily read the old e-mails in order. The normal person will give them a blank look and respond "why would I want to read the old stuff again?" The e-mail fundamentalist will start explaining how much mail he gets and how many mailing lists he subscribes to and how much easier it is to read his e-mails this way. Half way through this long explanation the normal person will start rolling their eyes and thinking "what a dork, he needs to get a life!"

I know some of you e-mail fundamentalists. This might come off as being a bit harsh and rude, but I am getting a bit tired of your tyranny. Just like with any other religion I will try to be respectful and do as you wish until it becomes forced. When I see you again and again harassing other people in an impolite, arrogant manner I see no reason in respecting your wishes because you quite obviously do not respect other people's preferences. What you are demanding in the first place is a special preference that isn't particularly user friendly. Just like some other non user friendly things religion has demanded of people in the past ;)

Working with usability is just like being in politics. If you try to make everyone happy you end up with something that nobody likes. If you try to work towards the greater good there will always be a group of people that would vote for someone else :) .