Category: Tech

Maybe not 100% of the time, but sadly this is more true than not:

Again, I’ll put it plainly: the Web has shitty UX.

No, really. It does.

For non-nerds, UX is short for User Experience. And frankly, it doesn’t get better when you dig below the surface. Not that there aren’t good quality web sites and applications, but there’s a lot of crap out there.

However, I don’t think the fault is the technologies that drive the web, as the author seems to imply. It’s possible to build cool, high-quality apps for the web, and there are people doing it every day. I would pin the blame for the dreck that’s out there on the creators themselves. Working on the web requires a level of expertise in code and design that not everyone has, but the barriers to entry are so low that nearly anyone who wants to can slap something together and publish it. Camplaining about the quality of apps/sites on the web is perfectly valid, but blaming it on the state of HTML/CSS/Javascript is kind of like me blaming my guitar for not being able to play “Traveling Riverside Blues.”

Wil can keep his GameTable. I want an iCade.

Though the product is actually a clever (and cruel) April Fool’s joke, Ty Liotta, ThinkGeek’s merchandising manager and head of custom product design, told Ars that it could very well end up being a real product. “People would really like to buy it, and we have had many people e-mailing and requesting it be created,” Liotta said. “Our customers know we have turned April Fools items into real products before, so they know there is the potential there.”

Came across a post yesterday directing folks to an app called GameTable for the iPad, which basically simulates various board and card game environments. You can’t actually play against the computer with the app, it just provides a replacement for the physical game pieces. Wil Wheaton seems excited by the idea, but I’m not convinced. I keep thinking back to an old (1998, which is ancient by internet standards) article by Jakob Nielsen arguing that web designs should strive to be “better than reality.”

I’ll grant that there are a lot of ways an application can be better than reality, but other than being able to carry around multiple game environments in your bag I don’t see the appeal for this particular app. It seems to be nothing more than an imitation of what we have in the closet, or has existed in various “travel” forms for years.

Came across an interesting post today discussing the lack of an accessible file system on the iPhone and now (apparently) the iPad. It concludes with this:

The end result is that regular folks are happier with their computers and that geeks are pissed that Apple has “dumbed down” the computer. Geeks bemoan the lack of the file system in the iPad. When they criticize it for not being a real computer, this is what they’re talking about. Well, so be it.

I’m hoping that devices like the iPad and iPhone contribute to the demise of the visual file system. I think its death in consumer devices will lower the bar for folks who just want to do stuff and get the computer out of the way.

While this may be expected from one in the geek camp, I’m not entirely sure that the lack of a filesystem is an unadulterated Good Thing. I’ll grant that people struggle with the concept– I’ve seen more than one Mac with files stored willy-nilly in the System Folder and elsewhere. However, by tying applications and their data so tightly together you also run the risk of 1) not being able to bring all the tools to bear that you might want to, and 2) not being able to access data, period.

For example, I have discussed getting an iPad with Chandra, who is interested in potentially using it to code video. However, the videos she wants to look at live on a hard drive that may be accessible via the network, but they’re not served up through a web server, which as far as I can tell is going to make them difficult to access on the iPad. Rather than being able to install a video player and bring files to it, she is going to have to find a video player that itself can track down potential files to play, or she’ll have to use the filesystem on a different machine to get the files where the iPad can see it.

Regarding tools, what happens if you create a document in the forthcoming versions of OmniOutliner or OmniGraffle and want to pull those files into iWork? Without a filesystem, how will you be able to get data from one place to another, without each individual application having to provide some kind of “Send to X” method for any and all application that exists?

Of course, my guess is that there will spring up various utilities to provide some level of a filesystem if Apple doesn’t make it accessible to users. In some sense I suppose this is fine, but I suspect there will need to be some level of richer data access on the iPad than what is currently in evidence.

I could live to regret this, but since I’ve got some slack time between projects I’ve decided to start on a web implementation of Fraction Bars. My original intent was to do this in Flash, but I’ve decided instead to go the HTML5 Canvas route. This could be a problem for IE users, but there do seem to be some plug-ins available to provide canvas support, and if folks don’t want to go that route I figure they can always download a real browser.

There’s been a small burst of posts about the new Windows phone, some more or less fawning, others more thoughtful. What strikes me about it is that rather than try to work within the resolution limits of the phone, they are spreading out their interfaces horizontally with the result being that users will be forced to scroll sideways to find what they’re after. I suppose folks will learn where things are, but I can’t help but think that their first experiences with the thing will resemble a scavenger hunt. Is that really the best way to design an interface?

Note to CMS providers. If you’re going to allow users to customize their site design, it’s probably not a good idea to reach into their customized CSS files and change their URLs. Just because a file name is like one of your defaults in the system does not mean it’s an error if the file type doesn’t match. Way to burn both my time and your tech support’s.

No one other than Chandra has asked me, but for whatever it’s worth here are my thoughts on the iPad.

First, it looks nifty and if money were no object I would most definitely grab one just to keep next to the loveseat to look stuff up on the web, tweak my NetFlix queue and check IMDB when we have those “where have we seen that person” moments. I also suspect that Bejeweled is going to rock on that thing.

Unfortunately, money is a problem, so I have to consider what we would do with it. I don’t think we can justify a web-browsing gamey toy when we have laptops that do that and much more. I think for us to justify an iPad we need to be able to do two things that I’m not sure are possible yet. We need to be able to print, and we need to be able to mount a fileshare. As far as I can tell you can’t do either of those, though I have seen some rumblings about those features maybe coming.

Finally, there’s the Flash thing. As an iPhone user this is something that I run into constantly, and while it can be annoying to see the little blue lego it’s never been a game-ender*. When that happens I either move on to something else, or I mark the page to check out later on another computer. After all, while there is a ton of stuff on the web rendered with Flash, it’s not like any of it is really critical. So as a user I’m perfectly happy without Flash. However, as a developer there are times when I need to do something zazzier than what is (easily) possible with HTML + Javascript + CSS, and I do have some concern about that. For example, we recently submitted a grant application part of which involves creating robust graphical applications on the web. My assumption has been that we would build those in Flash, but if we begin to see less than ubiquity in that platform we’ll have to re-evaluate what technologies to use (and I have no doubt we’ll run straight into the immovable object that is IE).

* Incidentally, the iPhone/iPad doesn’t do java applets either, and I haven’t heard a peep about that.

Isn’t a mouse with a joystick on it (not to mention eighteen buttons) kind of like having a Cessna with a motorcyle attachment?