Widgetopia

html formating tools

Simple, clear, easy to use. The moveable type formatting tools are useful even for folks who can write html as accelerators. Only downside is they are javascript dependant.

netflix's dynamic ratings tool

Netflix's ratings stars allow you through the magic of dhmtl to rate a movie without having to go to another page. The "not interested" button is a great way to tell the recommendations engine "Not that I'm knocking this flick, but it ain't my cup of tea."

Downsides: one star is the worst rating you can give (something I regretted when I made the mistake of renting Equilibrium).
Rating something overwrites the group rating. While I can see why the designers might think my rating of a movie means more to me than anyone else's, I still like to see what "everybody else" says.

fly-out menu

Found on slate, the left hand nav opens upon rollover. The targets are large enough, but the subnav incorporates cute and meanignless names of -- what? columns? it's unecessary.

article tools take two

These tools are used on the Sacramento Bee. They do have nice tooltips, but they are not only mysterious, but include non-article functions such as sign up for newsletter and make sacbee my homepage. A toolbar should be a toolbar, and hold functionality that affects tehthing the toolbar is acting on.. in this case the article.

The font size tool is slightly more intuitive than the IHT one. Anyone want to guess what that fourth icon is?

cool and crisp-- but visible?

Undenieably good looking, but a bit mysterious-- that printer could be just about anything. Good thing they are labeled. The font size tool unfortunately looks like a rating system.

Search Box

Found on KQED.org . Clear label, but coudl use another word to make it a bit clearer such as Search entire site for keyword. Also, submit button a bit odd... looks more like navigation. Why not a proper button labeled "search" or even "go"?

on-state

Found on the subsite of KQED Jacques Pépin: The Apprentice. Very clear state, but navigation doesn't read as navigation, and buttons provide poor affordance.

Views

This is a nice clean way to provide access to different views of data. note the way the on-state tab is slightly taller, bringing attention to itself and the options near it.