Ranko - All Comments

re: Killing Choices Is Not All That Good

Ranko — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:15:10 GMT

It's not about the tab - it is about usability and my options as a user. There is a rant to write about Google too, like why it chooses to default to a language it read from my browser once, but does not allow me the <i>user</i> to change it or remember it?

re: Killing Choices Is Not All That Good

John Dowdell — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:46:56 GMT

For what it's worth, when Opera and Firefox introduced tabbed windows, I don't think they offered a programmatic control, only a user action, to initiate a new tab.

(And if they did, Microsoft's take would likely be to introduce a variant handling.... ;-)

Searching on "open a new tab in javascript" still reveals lots of requests, but no solutions. Maybe next year's browsers will offer this. But then I'd guess we'd need "background tab blockers" just like we've got "popup window blockers" today.... ;-)

The selection and copying of text is up to the content creator in SWF files... it's easy to choose to allow such textfields.

The browser's back button has always been a significant cognitive problem to resolve... most think of it as a navigational aid, but some insist it should also control a single page's undo stack. I think a well-designed app would offer its own "undo" type of mechanism, and I've been leery of past attempts to overload the browser's UI elements. There's no widespread agreement here yet, though.

jd/adobe

re: Killing Choices Is Not All That Good

Peter — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:04:22 GMT

My sentiment exactly; here's my rant list:

1. I hate cleartype; makes everything blurry -- let me see those pixels. I have disabled cleartype in Windows and SilverLight is only happy to ignore it

2. Selecting text (this is a problem with Flash as well); it just so happens that I'm very used to selecting (copy + paste) text from a browser and when a part of the page won't let me do just that it's a sore thumb. I lose control and I'm not happy.

3. Back button; everything happens in that page, there's no going back or forward (or at least I haven't seen SL app that would do this)

4. The link issue you just mentioned.

5. Performance; it is quite slow compared to flash. I looked at the control demo and adjusting some sliders jumped my CPU to 10-15%. Needless to say that's ridiculous. With a regular Windows slider I can move it up and down all day and it would not move the CPU above 0%.

In summary, there are lots and lots of issues that need to be solved. Eye candy is just a small part of the whole story. You'll be wowed for a few minutes and then you will start getting annoyed.

re: Killing Choices Is Not All That Good

Dave — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:30:50 GMT

Keep in mind too, that there are some serious browser issues that MS has to work with. For example, Safari does not expose mousewheel events to the DOM. There is a workaround but it's an example of the difficulties that one can run into building a browser plugin.

It may not be in RTM, but I'm pretty sure that a developer could make it happen in the code.

re: Killing Choices Is Not All That Good

Ranko — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:59:34 GMT

This was supposed to sound more rantish, maybe a bit less serious than it came out.

Point was that Flash already made the mistake of introducing a web technology that ignored some basic, common user actions - like my pet favorite the whatever method of opening stuff in a new tab.

I am aware that it is in beta. OTOH if I were a betting man, I'd bet that it will not change that feature in RTM.

re: Killing Choices Is Not All That Good

Dave — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:44:32 GMT

I don't think that because the middle button doesn't open a tab, "no one cared to think about the usabilitiy of the user experience."

You are aware that this is a beta, right?

re: Is Developing Just About Writing Code?

Douglas Karr — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:34:56 GMT

For many, it is about writing code and that's terrible workmanship. Great developers don't simply write code, they learn what the user is trying to achieve and anticipate changes. Great developers will write twice as much functionality into a requirement than a code monkey. I think great developers are hard to find.

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Is Developing Just About Writing Code? | open source business applications

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Links for Tuesday 11 March 2008

Richard's Rant — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:43:25 GMT

A conversation about how to keep employees happy .Very pertinent in the current market I think. I particularly