Google places a real live email link to pat@example.com on the Google account login screen. Though I’m sure it’s intended to improve usability it has the opposite effect. They placed the pat@example.com link smack dab in between the email (login/username) field and the password field. Keyboard savvy users normally use the tab key to move from one field to another. And if you save your login credentials in your browser, you can just type the first few letters of the username into the correct field, hit tab and then hit enter. Following that standard keyboard login procedure on Google’s page doesn’t log you in;  it brings up a fresh message in your default mail program addressed to pat@example.com. Lame.

Stylish Fix for pat@example.com Google Annoyance

If you don’t use Firefox, you should. (Well, Chrome‘s OK, I guess.) This fix only works for Firefox. Install Stylish – it’s a great add-on that allows you to easily fix broken pages… like google.com! You’ll need to restart Firefox.

Then install this pat@example.com Stylish style I just made. You’re done.

My other stylish offering to fix Reddit

I used to like digg.com but then they kept “improving” things. I stopped liking Digg. I’d poked around on reddit.com before but it’s so hideous that usability suffers. I found some decent Stylish options to fix things but they weren’t quite right. So I tweaked some existing reddit Stylish styles to make the site more than bearable. If you use Reddit, try my Reddit Stylish effort.

Dan Dreifort helps businesses with usability and search. He enjoys traveling, sugar, fat, scuba, making music, writing blurbs about himself  in the third person, whining and other stuff too.