Optimus Pete » usability

Away with Applications: The Death of Desktop

Pete — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:09:39 +0000

There is a great talk that went up on Google Videos earlier this month called Away with Applications: The Death of Deskop. In it the speaker, Aza Raskin points out that no work is carried out actually using the computers desktop. He also points out the failing of desktop applications, that you frequently need to switch between applications, moving content, to achieve even relatively simple tasks.

I think his points are particularly relevant as we move into an age where many traditional desktop apps are being converted to web applications. I see an increasing trend in web applications of people trying to recreate desktop applications like interfaces in a browser-based setting. Aza urges us to rethink what we know about computer interfaces and to come up with exciting and innovative alternatives.

Traditional applications have had more and more functionality added to them to an extent that they have become “a portmanteau of all possible features”, again it is worrying that many of today’s successful web apps could suffer the same fate. The speaker encourages open APIs and Mash-ups as an alternative and a may to combine applications without having to switch between multiple programs/services.

One of the most interesting parts of the talk for me is when the speaker demos some systems that he’s been developing himself, one is a command-line interface for launching applications that uses almost real language commands and auto-complete. The other is an interesting zoomable desktop, which is much more work orientated than the traditional model, it also centres around the concept of “content as content”.

At nearly an hour and a half the video is quite long but I found it extremely interesting, the speaker also looks a bit like Rick Moranis of “Honey I shrunk the kids” fame, which has got to be a good thing.

# Pete Graham

My volatile relationship with Javascript

Pete — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:55:00 +0000

I started work in web development in 2004 at this point in time JavaScript was hugely unpopular in terms of web trends, this is probably because it was mostly used for annoying pop-ups, animations and whole list of other horrendous Internet crimes. I can recall having a King Herod style culling of all JavaScript from the TCAT website, my first main project.

Recently due to the popularity of AJAX web applications JavaScript’s popularity seems to have exploded again! I’ve had to brush up on my JavaScript skills for some of the User Interface work on phuser.com. Whenever I do JavaScript development I never feel as comfortable as I do with PHP or CSS. It’s definitely the weakest weapon in my web-dev arsenal.

I think it’s time to put my JavaScript prejudices behind me and get my hands dirty with some serious JS development. Now I’m not a JavaScript novice, I’ve got a few DHTML tricks up my sleeve I learnt back in the day. However I rarely write my own JavaScript, if I need a function I’ll look for one someone else has written.

When I’ve needed to learn about Javascript in the past I’ve always find it surprisingly hard to find good quality decent resources (compared to other Web technologies). I shall be posting links to any JavaScript articles/tutorials that I find particularly useful on this blog.

Articles

Using JavaScript for good, not evil: Good short intro to unobtrusive JavaScript
Behavoiral Separation: Covers the gallery example of the previous article but more indept code explaination
DOM nodes and tree: Unsurprisingly this provides a good introduction to the DOM (Document Object Model)

# Pete Graham

The Paradox of Choice: Less is More

Pete — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:32:16 +0000

There’s a superb talk over on Google Videos of Barry Schwartz speaking about “The Paradox of Choice”. He covers how we are faced with far too many choices on a daily basis in modern life and how often increased choice leads to greater dissatisfaction. The talk is filled with some compelling evidence and some amusing anecdotes. Towards the end of the talk Barry relates the Paradox of Choice to user interface design. He’s written a whole book on the subject that I’m very interested in reading now. I can definitely identify with where old Bazzer is coming from to quote some of my favourite Tool lyrics “over stimulation numbs me”.

It is a long talk at 1 hour 4 minutes but well worth watching, you can always check your emails in the boring bits . The quality of the video is very good, much better than most of the videos on YouTube. Here are some of the other talks I’m planning on checking out:

Let me know if you find any especially good tech talks over on Google Video or anywhere else.

# Pete Graham

The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard (if you can find it)

Pete — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:09:00 +0000

I read a great Article on how to design websites so they’re easy to read and aesthetically pleasing yesterday on informationarchitects.jp. I was going to do a short post linking to the article and a few of their others I found especially good, however the article seems to have disappeared from their site! They obviously haven’t heard cool URI’s don’t change. Thankfully I managed to grab myself a copy from the Google cache and have stuck it up here for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

When I have time to start tweaking the CSS for this site I think I’ll increase the font sizes and alter a few of the colours. Currently the fonts haven’t been changed from the original Binary News theme I used for the base of the design.
# Pete Graham