I just had an ex-colleague ask me this question and I couldn’t find any research on this matter. There is a lot on the alignment of labels in conjunction with form fields but nothing on the alignment of the value inside the field.

I chatted quickly with Luke Wroblewski about it (one perk of working in the same company) and we both agreed that if there are several fields, for example in a spreadsheet application, then monetary or generally number fields should be right aligned as that allows you to add them up quickly in your head without having to worry about decimals.

What are your thoughts, or do you know where I can find some research papers?

[tags]usability,form fields,text alignment,numbers,spreadsheets[/tags]

I always thought the only application that does make Windows worth my while was Total Commander but not I found something that is so amazingly handy it should ship with Windows.

Launchy is an open source app that allows you to jump to any app or document by pressing alt+space and typing its name. Mac users know this functionality from Quicksilver.

No more navigating through the Start menu or the Program Folder for me.

[tags]tool,windows,launchy,productivity,shortcuts[/tags]

I’ve upgraded my old DomCollapse tool to use the YUI, add bookmarkability or look a lot prettier using the YUI, opacity and animation.

• It scans the document for elements with a CSS class name of trigger.
• If the element is not a link it will
• hide the next element in the document
• create a new link inside the current element and
• alternately show and hide the next element when you activate the element (either by clicking with a mouse, or hitting enter on the keyboard after tabbing to it).
• If the element is a link it will show and hide the element the link’s href points to. If that element does not exist it will show and hide the next element in the node tree instead.

• Check out YUI DOM Collapse

You can get the code as a plain version or with fancy animations and both in live (minified) version and source versions. Best of all, I licensed it creative commons attribution, so go nuts using it for anything you want.

[tags]yui,collapsing,hideandshow,script,tool,animation[/tags]

My presentation at Stanford University some hours ago.

• Plan your web sites like you plan your parties – PDF 770kb

Thanks to John Foliot for inviting me over!
[tags]bestpractice,javascript,css,html,semantics,planning,parties ,drugs [/tags]

Here are the slides from my talk at the Webstandards Group meetup earlier. A massive Thanks to Stuart Colville for organizing the event, Steve Faulkner for his presentation on screen readers and accessibility and everyone who attended and bought me drinks afterwards.

• new Listen to the podcast
• HTML version of the notes
• PDF version of the slides

Slideshare.net version:

[tags]webstandardsgroup,london,wsg,codebloat,javascript,css,optimization,talk,slides[/tags]