Is there a difference between "blocked" and "banned"?

I’ve been requested to make a UI that allows to block/ban users from logging in. In the wireframes I’ve been provided, they use the term “blocked”. But I feel like a better term for this would be “banned”.
I feel like blocked means “there…
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Should we be optimistic or pessimistic with UI updates on AJAX requests?

We are discussing in our team how best to handle UI updates after a user does something to cause an AJAX request to the server.
Here are options we are considering:
Instantly update the UI and add/update/remove the item that has been ch…
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Extensive filtering on search results page

I’m just working on a quite complex interface. There are/will be tons of items in it and there is a massive search feature. Search is filterable just like on Ebay or Amazon etc. Filters are very complex (in fact different even by categorie…
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What’s a better way to refer to an Intranet site?

I’ve found most of our users are totally unaware of the term, though it’s plastered on the front page of our Intranet site and the desktop icon they use to get to the site is labeled “(Company) Intranet”.
In fact many users I’ve met have …
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How should large table columns be handled on a responsive design?

Related to This Question, I’m interested in what I should do with a responsive design theme where the users have control over the columns which are displayed in a tabular, data rich page. Users are able to manipulate which columns are disp…
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Are grayscale buttons with icons usable and effective?

The image here is
old gmail
new gmail, when no mail is selected
new gmail, when mail is selected
new delicious
To me, the buttons are unlabeled and tough to discover.
I don’t believe the icons do a good enough job to make labels r…
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Alternative term to "Blacklist" and "Whitelist"

In short, my company is developing a management tool for managing SIM cards. One of the features of the tool is to block the SIM card if it’s put into a none allowed device by device IMEI validation.
The feature for this was mocked up us…
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Alternatives to MDI layout?

As WPF has no built-in MDI support I was looking around for alternatives for a rather large graphical work oriented application. The application will have a lot of different widgets, and for a lot of those the usable area will be different…
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Guidelines for when to auto-save settings vs "save" button

In our web application we have a number of pages to do with user settings, in different categories. For most of them we have a display page with an edit button/link, which takes them to a form which has a cancel/save exit path.
However, …
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Can tags have hierarchy?

Does anyone have experience working with nested tags? I could not find any websites that allow users to have hierarchies in their tags (equivalent to non-mutually exclusive categories). Is it a bad practice in general? If so, why?