Blogger usability

This blog, as well as most of my other blogs, are made using Blogger.

The irony is that Blogger keeps making changes much beyond my control. They then send me mails telling me that I need to correct things on the blog, without giving me a five minute instruction on how to change it.

On behalf of this blog and my other blogs, I want to apologise for not having the time to fix all usability errors that somehow are introduced into a blog, which once worked fine.

Cannot make comments on Blogger

If you go to a blog that is handled by Blogger, like this one, you may not be able to make any comments. You do not get any good error messages, but the text you painstakingly composed disappears into cyberspace.

If this happens, it is very possible that you have blocked third party cookies in your browser. How that is done in your particular browser varies, so google for "block third party cookies" and the name of your browser.

(As an example, in Chrome for MacOS, you go to Chrome > Preferences > Advanced > Privacy and Security > Site Settings > Cookies and Site Data > Block Third-party Cookies.)

If you want to make a comment, toggle the setting temporarily to off, make the comment, and then toggle back on, if you want to continue to block third-party cookies.

Text-only News sites

While a lot of web sites out there become increasingly slow and distracting and bandwidth hungry, there are a few sites that still give you no-nonsense text information without pictures, huge video ads or useless javascript code. Here are a few such sites:

• CNN. A lite version of CNN's news. Whether you like their journalism or not, it is quick to load. In English.
• DR. Danish state television teletext news. In Danish.
• NOS. Dutch publish news broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting. In Dutch. 
• NPR. American National Public Radio without any distracting layout. In English.
• SVT. Swedish state television teletext news. In Swedish.
• Textnews Pythonanywhere. Aggregated news from different RSS feeds. In English and Hindi.

OneDrive and Twitter on iPad problem

Another OneDrive bug, but it may not be Microsoft's bug this time. To reproduce with the currently latest versions of iPad OS and Twitter App:

1. Open Twitter on your iPad.
2. Find a nice picture in a post. Click on it.
3. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner to get a context menu.
4. Click on "Save to Files".
5. Select OneDrive and some folder of your choice.
6. Repeat the steps above with another image. In both cases, the system (iPad? Twitter? OneDrive?) will save with the file name "PNG image.png".
7. Wait for the second file to be synchronised with OneDrive.

This doesn't happen - at least for me. The synchronisation is somehow blocked. The following workarounds do not work:

• Delete the file from the OneDrive app. There is no option to do it.
• Delete the file from iPad's Files app. The option to do it is greyed out.
• Rename the file from any app. There is no option to do it.
• Kill the OneDrive app. This doesn't change anything.
• Restart the iPad. This doesn't change anything.

What does work is to remove the OneDrive app from the iPad and reinstall it. You lose the second file, but you probably find some other acceptable way of saving it, like from your Mac or PC or to your photo library or some other cloud service where you then copy it to OneDrive.

Apple's Music and Split Albums

For a long time Apple's Music app (and before that iTunes) has introduced crazy splits of Albums. One thinks one has one album, like Mozart's String Quintets with Cecil Aronowitz and the Amadeus Quartet. However, the Music app splits the album into two, with the tracks spread seemingly randomly between them.

The same album split into two by Apple's engineers.

For an almost equally long time, my solution has not included any trust in Apple, who has not shown any interest in fixing the problem. Instead, I have added all the songs of the "two" albums into one "Playlist," which I have played like an album.

However, when there are too many song tracks scattered too randomly between the two ghost albums, it is very difficult to make sure that everything gets to the right place in the right order. I recently found a somewhat reliable way of doing it semi-automatically.

1. Click on one of the two icons for the album. 
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list and check if there is a link called Show Complete Album. (See illustration below.) If there is such a link skip the steps 3-5 and go to direct to 6. 
3. Check different views (albums, downloaded...) to see if the link is there.
4. Click on one or several items and remove them from the downloaded songs.
5. Repeat until you see the link, or until you decide that life is too short for this kind of exercises. But be patient and take your time and wait. Something is probably updating in the background.
6. Click on the link Show Complete Album. Surprisingly, this view contains all the tracks from both ghost albums.
7. Click on the red circle with three white dots to get a context menu for the album. 
8. Click on "Add to a Playlist". Give the playlist a good name, and from now on use the Playlist instead of the broken Album icons. 

Click on the red link!

Enjoy your music!

Airpod Pro - My User Errors

Do you remember when a pair of headphones was something with a cable, which you plugged into your cassette recorder, and with the two cushions on your ears you were ready to go? That was a long time ago.

Apple’s new Airpod Pro headphones are so much better than the old cable version, but they invite to errors and problem solving. These are some of the mistakes I have made.

1. I tried to hold the box upside down, to make the headphones would fall into my hand. However, the box is magnetic, so that was to no avail.
2. I tried to grab the headphones with two fingers to get them out. However, they are so deep in the box, that one doesn’t get a grip. One has to gently push them out from the back with just one finger.
3. I did not find the “button” on the headphones. It is the short stick that works like a button, if one presses it.
4. I did not know that the "button" is called a "force sensor."
5. I by mistake held the button so long that noise cancellation was switched off, and I walked around for one hour thinking Apple's noise cancellation sucked, before I figured it out.
6. I spent time looking for the volume control on the headphones, before I realised that I needed to use my Apple Watch or iPhone to change the volume.
7. I could not figured out how to take a call. Where is the microphone? If one only dares to try, it works reasonably well just having an airpod in the ear.
8. I could not figure out how to check if the box (or "case") was fully charged. At first, I did not even realise that it could be charged. The trick is actually to open it with at least one airpod close to a switched on phone or iPad. Then a little window pops up on the device which tells me how much it is charged.
9. I did not know that one could switch on noise cancellation for just one Airpod on the iPhone: Settings > Accessibility > Airpods > Noise cancellation with one Airpod. I still do not know when one would not have that switched on.
10. I did not figure out that one could access noise control settings for the Airpods from an Apple Watch, when the airpods are in use, using the remote sound symbol.
11. I still have not fully figured out how Siri works with the Airpods.
12. I did not realise one could use the Airpods as a spy tool, by forwarding the sound from the iPhone microphone to the Airpods in Settings > Control Centre > Customise controls > Hearing, and then Live Listen, from the Control Centre.
13. I did not know that one could share the sound to a second pair of Airpods, so one can listen to the same sound with a buddy, from the share audio icon in the control centre > Share Audio… 
14. I did not know that one could use only one Airpod at the time, and charging the other in the box.
15. I did not know that one could make the Airpods make a sound using the app Find My. And I did not know that it only worked if the Airpods were outside the box.
16. I did not know that the Airpods could announce the caller, if I activated that function in Settings > Phone > Announce calls > Headphones.
17. I did not know one could reset the Airpods with the following steps: Put them in the box and close the lid. > Wait 30 seconds. > On the iPhone, go to Settings > Bluetooth > (i) > Forget this device. > With the lid on the box open press and hold the button on the back for 15 seconds until the status light starts blinking.
18. I did not know that the Airpods automatically would take over from the iPhone, if one takes them out of the box and sets them in one’s ear during a call.
19. I did not know that one could take a call by pressing the button, if the Airpods are in my ear, when the call comes.
20. I did not know that there was a load of settings for the Airpods on the iPhone in Settings > Bluetooth > (i).
21. I did not know that “Transparency” was the kind of noise control one should use when taking a call in a quiet room to avoid reverb of one’s own voice.
22. I did not know that "Noise cancellation" was the kind of noise control one should use when taking a call in a noisy environment. There is annoying reverb from my own voice, but I lock out noise from the surroundings, which makes it much easier to hear the other person. There is no perceptible difference for the other person.
23. I did not know that one could have Siri read out text messages, if one goes to Settings > Notifications > Announce Messages with Siri.
24. I did not know that Siri announcing text messages does not work, if one is using the phone.
25. I did not know that one could use Siri to reply to text messages.
26. I did not know that one got an option to confirm before Siri replies to text messages.
27. I did not dare trying to use it when there was a lot of noise around, as I assumed that the microphones wouldn't work properly. After some tests, other people say they hear me very clearly.

Apart from that, the Airpod Pro headphones have a few great advantages I have not seen in any other devices:

1. When one works among other people, who are noisy, the noise cancellation is very efficient at blocking out their voices, and even some some music.
2. When one is in a noisy environment, one can take and place phone calls and still both hear what the other person says and say things that they will hear.

An earlier version. Better usability. Worse specs.

Stay away from Microsoft OneDrive! But not that far away...

Update 14 December 2019: Microsoft seems to have fixed the problem mentioned below. I just connected with another computer, and with the same manipulations I did below, everything worked reasonably well. Caution still needed, however.

My previous post was about how great it was to have all my data in the Cloud, in case I lose my laptop. It is only fair that I now describe the disaster that a cloud service can cause. In this case Microsoft's OneDrive.

For many years, I have chosen to sync a few folders from OneDrive to my local storage on my travel laptop, so they can be indexed by Spotlight. The rest of the folders are huge, and I see no reason to keep them locally on all devices.

A few hours ago, I tried to connect to a city library WiFi. The library had problems with their certificate, and after a few attempts, I gave up. However, OneDrive eagerly asked me to add my credentials again, asked me to select my local folder (which has not changed for years) and as soon as I got on a more reliable network, it started downloading my entire OneDrive to my local storage. This process blocked my laptop, it blocked the Preferences panel of OneDrive, so I could not even access the place to stop the disaster.

OneDrive, enthusiastically created folders all over my local storage, and when I after twenty minutes finally managed to tell it to stop the mayhem, it told me that it had 16000 changes to to through. It blocked my computer with 16000 things that had not happened.

The panel where one selects folders to download finally appeared, but it was still frozen, so it took minutes to scroll down the 15 items and to unselect the folders I had never selected to start with.

I then disabled their deleterious "Files On-Demand" service, which I had never asked for or enabled.

After two hours, I now have a sync message, which says that OneDrive "needs my attention" to solve problems Microsoft's incompetent programmers have caused. Five folders "already exist" in the "same location online". I never created those folders! Microsoft's disastrous software did. I have no idea what will happen if I delete, rename or copy those folders, and I bet neither does Microsoft.

Update: The way I got out of this may or may not have avoided disaster, but I think it was reasonably safe. I took the following steps:

1. Rename all the folders with "problems" according to OneDrive. I added "- garbage" to the end.
2. Wait for all the garbage folders to be uploaded to OneDrive.
3. Check the file list in the web-interface to OneDrive. Make sure the files are there, and that they are unlikely to contain data that is in the original folders.
4. Delete the garbage folders using the web-interface.
5. Wait for OneDrive to sync and removing them from my local storage.

I do not know if this was the safest or quickest way of rescuing my folders, but it seems to have worked.

Sending your worries to the clouds

I just came back home after a pleasant ten day holiday with good friends. As soon as I came back, I went to my bedroom to pick up my laptop, which turned out not to be on its usual place. I then looked for it at its unusual place. It wasn't there either. I then looked at all the places where I could have placed it, but it was nowhere to be found.

I realised I probably had forgotten it at a café or restaurant before I left for holiday, so I walked around to a few places, asking waiters and other staff if they had found a laptop that looked lost. Nobody had.

The moral of this is not that one should be careful with one's laptop. The moral is that I never for a moment felt anxious. I have all my data in different clouds: google, Apple, Microsoft and Adobe. Even if the laptop was lost for ever, I knew no data would be lost. I might have to pay for a new laptop, which admittedly would be irritating, but no data would be lost.

I'm aware that there are some security risks with cloud services, but for my mostly innocent data, the benefit of convenience vastly compensates for the risk of data theft.

(I did find the laptop at home in the end. I had for some reason placed piles of paper on top of it before leaving, and as soon as I reached for the papers, the laptop smiled happily at me, like a dog when its owner comes home from work.)

When all valuables are in distant clouds.

Breaking existing usability

One of the things that is most fascinating with usability is how perfectly working products can be rendered less useful by "improvements."

Just a few examples of this.

First out is Apple. When you access their quick and dirty app Notes on iOS, it is not as quick but quite as dirty as one would expect. One cannot currently get around the selection of folders. When I open the app, I have one folder in one location, and yet, Apple forces me to select it to see its content.

One can see why this would be useful for people who use this app (in spite of the fact that it lacks history and trash to recover lost data), and who have their notes in a large number of folders, which they all access frequently. But for users like me, who have only eleven notes altogether, it is just another way to discourage me from using the app.

It didn't use to be like this. Before Notes introduced folders, the app was quick and easy to use.


The next one is Google docs in iOS, who falls into the common trap of proposing unnecessary templates. In the lower right corner of docs, there is a friendly plus sign in plenty of colours that invites you to create a new document.

However, when you click on it, you do not get a new blank doc. Google takes the opportunity to insert another step on the road, an option to use a template:

This means that one is give one more opportunity to forget the bright idea one wanted to write down, before one can actually start typing. The step didn't use to be there. Google introduced it with the introduction of templates some time ago.

To be fair to google, the concept is not only theirs. Both Apple Pages and Microsoft Words by default provide a lot of templates that may be of use to some people. However, both Apple and Microsoft allow the users to switch off the extra step to become productive straight away.


Another commonly introduced degradation is unwanted internet connections. If you use Apple's text editor TextEdit in MacOS with a slow internet connection, you know what this is about. To save a new document, or even to close a document without saving, one will pass the save dialog, which for some reason connects to the internet. If there is a time out, you could actually fail in closing a document you want to discard. Apple introduced this risk for failure to make certain things easier, like saving to internet locations, but for some users in come contexts it is just plain annoying.


That was my moaning of the day.

Default language for MS Word document

If you use MS Word to type in more than one language, you have probably been frustrated occasionally.

My latest frustration was the default language of a document - not default language for all new documents, but for one document. I have found no clean solution for this, at least using MacOS or iOS.

However, for people who like to live dangerously, one can use a text editor - in this example BBEdit:

1. Open the Word document in BBEdit. (One can drag the document onto the BBEdit icon, or use the File > Open menu in BBEdit.)
2. Expand the "folders" in the Word document.
3. Go through at least settings.xml and styles.xml in the "word" folder.
4. In each file, search for at least the tags rPrChange and docDefaults. If they have a lang value that is different from what you want, change it.
5. Save.
6. Make frequent backups.
7. Don't blame me, if anything goes wrong.

An example of a tag with French:

w:lang w:val="fr-FR"

If you are not happy with French, you can change fr-FR to another ISO Code, like en-GB, en-US or de-DE.

This can be handy, if you get the wrong spell checker when creating new comments or paragraphs. I have also had problems with a document that changed the spelling of an entire document, as soon as I opened it on an iPad or iPhone. It did not matter that I had changed all document styles to the language of my choice, Word for iOS changed it to the default language for the document. I suspect some corruption when converting to or from Pages, but I do not know exactly when the problem appeared.

In case you just want to change the default language for all new documents, that is much easier, just  open a document and go to > Tools > Languages > Default.

This blogpost was written for MS Word version 16.25 for MacOS.

Dropbox and limited bandwidth - automatic updates

To my surprise, I discovered that the version of the Dropbox application on my hard disk was just two days old. I hardly ever use Dropbox, so I could not understand how the 200 Mb application could have been updated. It turns out that Dropbox happily checks for updates and downloads them in the background, and there is no way to switch that off.

Solution: go to the Application folder > drag the Dropbox application to the Trash > empty the Trash > dance on the remains of Dropbox > call all gods and demons of all religions known to man to place a curse on Dropbox.

Useless Apps appear in Google docs with Chrome when opening a txt file

If, like me, you use vim or some other text editor to sync text files with Google Docs, it is likely that you sometimes want to convert the file to a standard Google Doc.

In some cases, when you double click on the txt file, you are prompted with a long range of applications to "Open with." If you want this choice, that's fine. However, if you want to get rid of the list of local apps, the culprit is likely to be the Extension Application Launcher for Drive (by Google). To get rid of it, click on the Chrome menu (not the Google Docs menu) Windows > Extensions. There you have options to get rid of the extension or simply disable it until you may need it some other day.

The "problem"

The "solution"

Don't make me click "here"!

The internet has been around for decades, and yet the biggest of the big companies have not understood one of the basics of security:

If you force your users to go through procedures that could be fraudulent, then fraudsters will use those same procedures.

Some cases to illustrate this.

Flash Player. For many years Flash Player has popped up windows on people's screens, encouraging us to click "here" to get the latest safest version. The obvious problem is that most people cannot tell that window from a window from a spurious webpage, pointing to a completely different webpage that contains malware. Don't force me to click "here" for crying out loud!

Microsoft's "unusual activity." I recently took a quick trip across the border into the next country. Microsoft noted that my mail account now was updated from another location 50 km away from home, which seemed suspicious to them. They sent me a mail to my iPhone saying that to "help keep you safe, we've blocked access to your inbox, contacts list, and calendar."And "To regain access, you'll need to confirm that the recent activity was yours." And to do that, I should click "here," following a link that led far away onto a web page that could or could not be spoofed, where I was supposed to enter my password. I'm pretty sure it was them. The link pointed to eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com, which redirected (!) to live.com, and I'm fairly sure both of those URLs belong to Microsoft. But I was not willing to take the risk, so I stopped using MS Mail temporarily, until I got back home and could securely sign in on a laptop to a URL I knew I could trust. Don't make me click "here"!

Apple's Calendar. I used to sync my MacOS Calendar application with my Google calendar - a fairly convenient thing to do. After the latest update, however, (MacOS 10.14.4), I got a notification telling me that I need to update my Google password in Safari. So I am supposed to click "here" on the notification to open System Preferences, where I get another "here" that leads to a secret URL, which I do not even see, in a browser I never use, and where I never configured the security to my liking. I wearily click "here," and Safari displays a window, where the address bar is hidden, so I cannot easily see which URL I have accessed, unless I take some more steps. There are so many shady new things here with links leading to places I have not been before. I can take time to verify each step and make sure everything is legitimate, and I would have to spend probably half an hour before being perfectly sure. Honestly, I prefer to switch off the sync. Don't make me click "here"!


Each of those procedures, where big companies encourage users to naively click "here" without any guarantee that the links are safe, makes it easier for hackers to convince people to click "here" on their malware windows.

Don't, please, don't, make us click "here"!

(In the examples above, the actual label on the button or URL is not always literally "here," but that is its meaning.)

Mailto and some of its many problems.

I just realised what an annoyance the URI scheme mailto: is. When I see an email address somewhere on a webpage or in an app, it is very rare that I want to use it to create a new mail from my default mail address in my default mail client with that mail in the to-field.

Here are some of things I may equally well want to do:

• Add it to my contact list for later use.
• Paste it in a mail or SMS to forward it to someone else.
• Add it to CC or BCC field.
• Add it to a mail I already started writing.
• Send it from another client than my default. (I almost only use web mail.)
• Search for it in my mailbox or on my hard disk, to see if I already had a contact with them.

The irony is that the person who put their mail address in a mailto-element on a web page probably already is inundated by spam, as it is about lesson one in the spammers manual of favourite tricks, to crawl webpages looking for valid target mail addresses.

Whining about a colour between red and yellow

I'm tired of my mobile phone provider, even though I'm sure any other provider would cause me as much irritation. There is no reason to name them, but for those who wonder, the name of the provider describes a colour somewhere between red and yellow.

Spam. They keep sending me spam messages about great new deals. I duly blocked that number, but nevertheless, they managed to get through with a message today. I have no idea how. Could be an Apple bug, I guess.

Selling through bugs. Last time I bought an iPhone, I'm sure I clicked on a cheap model. Three seconds later, I got a confirmation message for a more expensive model. Five seconds later, I called them and asked them to cancel the order. They refused to do so, and insisted I must have clicked on the more expensive model, something that of course is impossible to be sure about. The only way to cancel the order, according to their staff, was to wait for it to be delivered, refuse to pick it up, which meant it would be sent back, and then the order would be cancelled. As I needed the phone urgently, that was out of question for me, so I coughed up for the more expensive model I did not need.

Silly creepy alerts. From a completely new spam number, they sent me a warning that I should unplug the modem during a thunderstorm. How do they know there will be a thunderstorm where I am? Do they track my movements? If so, they do it badly. There was no expected thunderstorm, where I was or any place where I usually go. Why did they send out a message about a trivial precaution everyone knows about? Just to spam me and divert my thoughts from other tasks? And why do they send me a warning about a modem? I do not have any cable modem at all, and I have nothing with them except a mobile phone subscription.

Surprise conditions. I recently changed from one subscription to another to save a few euro a month. On their site, there was a great comparison chart, which listed the difference in conditions. I got switched, and suddenly my iPad lost internet connection. I walked into one of their shops, and they explained that the new subscription did not include the extra SIM-card I used. I could get that service at an additional fee, which meant that my saving per month was close to zero. Besides, there was an activation fee to "activate" the SIM card I had been using for years.

Lost iPad access abroad. For quite a long time, my iPad refused to access the internet when I was abroad. The iPhone SIM worked fine. A few times, my provider sent me new SIM cards that worked for half a day abroad, before the connection failed without any useful error message. This was fixed when I finally got to talk to someone at a super-helpdesk, who revealed that there could be a difference between the SIM-cards needed in iPads and iPhones, even though this in most situations wasn't noticeable. I got a new SIM directly from their central, and the iPad started working again.

Twitter links not loading - a paranoic trick

If you use Twitter and sometimes prefer to copy links to articles and open them in private browser windows instead of in the window where you currently run Twitter, you may have noticed that some links never open.

I don't know why this happens. There may be some check where the link originates from, or the change of environment could make the systems confused. That doesn't really matter. What matters is that...

There is a fix:

1. Copy the link to the tweet itself. (Not the link inside the Tweet.) You can do this for example by using the V-like menu icon in the top right of the Tweet.
2. Open the private window.
3. Paste and go to the link. You will now have opened the Tweet in a window where you are not logged in.
4. Click on the link inside the Tweet. It is now likely to work.

It it still doesn't work, try pasting the link into a completely different browser. I have seen some links that won't open in Firefox, even though they open in an equally private window in Chrome.

(Some notes on why you may want to do this in certain cases: when you click on a link, the receiving URL will get the data of the browser session. If it is a link to Youtube, and you are signed in to google, Youtube may add this to your video history and recommend similar videos. If it is a link to a newspaper you subscribe to, the newspaper will learn that you are interested in this particular article, which you have no interest in at all, as you just get it for a friend. And you may simply want to avoid all the cookies each and every website now clutters your hard disk with. You may also have a touch of paranoia and want to limit any traceable internet activity. No matter which reason, the fix works.)

Kobo - not quite the thing

Today at 22:19, I received a mail from Kobo, the ebook company. To continue using my Kobo device, I need to make an update before midnight. Today. Less than two hours after the mail reached my inbox.  Otherwise, I will have to find a laptop, a laptop cable, install some new software on the computer and download the update this way.

I try to like Kobo, I really do. I like competition, and alternatives to Amazon Kindle and Apple’s Books are always welcome.

But Kobo keeps failing. My device is unresponsive, and I often have to wait for several seconds after having clicked on a button before anything happens. Their books can be bad OCR scans with plenty of typos. One I just deleted didn’t even begin the first paragraph with a capital letter. The proof reader hadn't even got to the first letter.

I wish Kobo all the best, but unfortunately it is often not worth the pain for the consumer to try to use it.

Writing in Italian or Scandinavian with MS Word for iOS

This post applies if you type in a language with the word “i” in lower case, in other words not English, which uses upper case I to describe “me.” Languages where this post applies are for example Italian, Croatian, Catalan, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

The post applies to the current iOS in February 2019 on both iPhone and iPad, when you use the current version of Microsoft Word for iOS.

The problem is that Word automatically capitalises the letter i to I, even if you use an Italian keyboard layout, Italian spellchecking (Review > Proofing Language) and run your iOS device in Italian (or another language with lower case i as a single word).

There are a few cumbersome things you can do to type i:

• Press i and space, and then step back with the delete key, and type it once more.
• Press i and tap on the I that pops up every time. This solution does not necessarily work if you use a hardware keyboard.
• Press two spaces and tap between them. Press i. Tap anywhere on the screen.
• Type the entire text and accept that every i becomes an I. Then go back and double tap on every I, then type i to replace the text, and then tap somewhere else on the screen each time.

I have sent feedback to Microsoft about this, and if you have the same problem in your favourite language, I suggest you do so too. 

 
i > I