Evan's blog

I have been working as an official business analyst for just over 10 months now and one large piece in my current position is to be the user advocate. This typically manifests itself as lead tester of software. I have been watching a trend, here in Whitehorse, that sees an increase in the use of links as buttons, or link buttons. These link buttons are used on forms and are usually used to indicate a secondary action - the primary action is usually a button.

First off, I am not an official interaction designer (IxD) nor am I a guru in this space but I have implemented a lot of interfaces on lots of different platforms, soaked in the design guidelines of many platforms, worked closely with IxD people and have what I consider a decent eye for a usable interface. That out of the way...

My primary concern with the use of a link button is that it is running against 15 years of ingrained mental models - a link navigates; a button signifies an action. Using a link to signify an action breaks that mental model. It requires users to think if they are triggering an action, such as submiting a form, or navigating to another page or application screen.

A secondary concern is the web browser can store that action in it's history allowing the user to use the Back button to return to the previous state. The user probably does not wish to return to this location, but navigation actions are stored, button actions are not store in the same manner.

Link buttons get more twisted when working with the web as application. In a regular desktop application I have not seen links to signify actions - they are navigation links to help files, web sites, other external locations. Pure navigation. However, in the web as application the purpose of the link can be used for dual purpose - because of design decisions. I state that you can use other techniques to indicate primary and secondary actions without causing user confusion or design issues.

I propose an end to the use of the link as button on website. It has the potential to confuse the user, it breaks the mental model of what purpose a link serves and the usability aspects can be accommodated using standard input tools.

This forum thread comes from this argument from the other direction (buttons as navigation) but the arguments are the same in reverse.

If you have been having trouble connecting to the internal servers at the Yukon Government by their short name over the VPN then this tip is for you.

This tip is tested with Windows 7 and IE8. Other OSes and browsers may not give the same results.

1. Ensure you have the hosts file with the short name - the Service Desk should be able to provide this. It goes into <Windows>/System32/drivers/etc

2. Set IE8 to NOT Automatically Detect Settings. Under Internet Options -> Connections -> Lan Settings deselect the Automatically Detect Settings checkbox.

Thanks to everyone that came out to the Meltdown this past Tuesday! We had a great Q&A session on Virtualization with Richard Whittaker, who had many great observations from his experiences in virtualizing a data centre. We then continued the conversation at the Roadhouse over a beer.

Thanks again to Outcrop Yukon for providing a comfortable location and drinks and nibbles for the attendees. Many thanks to Jason.

The next Meltdown is scheduled for a Monday in early/mid June so keep your calendar open for the next event!

This is the third MeltDown scheduled to re-occur every 6 to 8 weeks. We avoided a March meet-up because of "March Madness" and gave our busy tech community some time to recover from the end of the Government's fiscal year.

The last event was awesome!! Thanks to all that attended and Outside the Cube for hosting.

MeltDown 3 will be graciously hosted at Outcrop Yukon's offices, details below, where there will be some nibbles and drinks and space to chat in. There is not a lot of power available so bring fully charged devices if you are planning on bringing them.

This time we are going to have an Q&A evening with Richard Whittaker, a Configuration Manager at Northwestel, on a current buzz technology topic: Virtualization.

Richard was a significant player in the very successful migration of Northwestel's significant server infrastructure to VMWare's ESX platform. Their migration reduced power consumption, heat production and physical server counts.
Richard will be available to talk about software concerns, hardware concerns, and any of your other tricky virtual questions. He will also be available after the Q&A session to chat about specific solutions for your business.

The Q&A session will start after 5:15p.

Event Details:
Location: Outcrop Yukon Offices - 207 Black St (the big blue building beside what used to be the Brick)
Time: 5:15pm
Date: Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
Duration: 1.5hrs - if people have an urge to go longer we will be migrating to the Roadhouse to continue the evening!

For people unfamiliar with this event see this link: http://www.justwerks.com/site-tags/meltdown

Join the Discussion on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=32095888353

I have no doubt missed some people so please forward this on to others (e.g. your employees or co-workers) that would be interested.

Please RSVP so we can know the headcount for the evening!

Thanks for your time! Hope to see you shortly!

Thanks to everyone that came out to the Meltdown this past Monday! We had a great presentation on XML Storage by Glen Jolly of Pinnacle Consulting and there were many questions along the way.

Thanks again to Outside the Cube for providing a comfortable location and drinks and nibbles for the attendees. Thanks to Alastair.

The next Meltdown is scheduled for a Monday in early/mid March so keep your calendar open for the next event!

If you have a desire to present and/or host a Meltdown please fire me off an email and we can work out the details.

I have attached a PDF summary of Glen's presentation for your interest.