Features 2.0 - user interfaces, design and interaction with software and gadgets

How does the .zip survive?

2011-12-02T17:23:00.001+01:00

It is a funny thing that anyone today uses zip format. Most of today file formats like office files, pictures, music and video are efficient enough that zip has nearly no effect on them. Also, communication and storage is efficient enough that no one should bother for some gains in file size.

And it is bother to use zip, though Microsoft did something to improve zip usability in Windows and make it more folder like. But even in Windows it is clearly not the same like other folders (you can't see thumbnails in it, Recycle bin is not supported, only most important commands from context menu are supported). And to use files in most applications, extraction is required (e.g. Picasa won't show you the pics in your zip).

So, how then zip survived? Well, there is one common workflow where zip is still useful. It is downloading pack of files from web. Unfortunately, it is not possible to download them as a folder, and zip does the trick. But is it really necessary to do such thing?

Well, I can think of solution from client side. Web browser downloads zip files, but before doing virus scan, it unpacks the zip into folder and deletes the zip file. So user is tricked that he actually downloaded folder.

On the other hand there is probably some server side solution. As it is possible to download folder using ftp protocol, there might be some server workaround for this. Though, as millions of sites already use zip to send folders, I guess first solution would be much more effective immediately.

Consumer vs business application

2011-09-04T20:20:00.001+02:00

Having the same software for consumer and business market is something that most people think is OK, but it is not. Now it is not that only these two market segments exists, there should always exist some in between - like artists and students.

During 80s it was very clear: PC was a business machine. Consumers had Commodore, Atari or Sega and Nintendo, and artists had Mac. All of a sudden, in 90s things changed. Commodore and Atari went to near oblivion, so only PCs left and consoles. But consoles were too much single-purpose, so only PCs left as general purpose consumer computers. And it lasted until 2010. But then it was iPad. Steve Jobs saw how much consumers needed appliance that would just work.

But it caused the view that consumer applications are going to take over the business. Oh, how wrong is that. Even Steven Sinofsky, Windows division president said something like that.

First, there is general problem in motivation - consumers usually want to surf, and business users usually want to take away distractions. Surf started with remote control, and it is quite obvious that consumers want to face different and sometimes random content. That is part of the fun.

Second, businesses are not ready to trade-off flexibility for simplicity, consumers are. You can't say that you can't service the consumers because your IT doesn't support that. You can't expect to pay higher taxes because your IT doesn't support that. So, you must be able to do everything and even some marginal cases, which makes systems much more complex.

Third, security as in business software you must be able to audit, track and protect nearly everything. Consumers usually don't need it.

So that's it. You can obviously have the same platform for both purposes (like HTML or Java or .Net), but you need different applications and interfaces to succeed.

Design principles

2011-08-26T19:06:00.000+02:00

There is just one design principle - think what will fit your end user the best.

Everything else are just lies. Guidelines at the best case. I will take just one case that I am most familiar with, but you can see many others in many places. During the design of Firefox 3 Mozilla launched idea that Firefox interface should be native to the platform that Firefox user uses (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS, Linux). But they went so long in applying this principle that Firefox 3 for XP looked very similar to Windows XP. Yes, to the system which look was nearly 10 years old! Fortunately, there was good feedback (including myself), and mistake was avoided.

But it puts us to the core of the problem - you can't follow design principle without thinking. Generally speaking, design principle is good because following it you are doing something that is good for end user. But as you can see in this case, that is just one side of the coin. At the same time you might be doing something bad for the user. You might go against another principle. It is very unfortunate that they are not mutually exclusive, and most people forget that. And that is why this is more art than science.

Google Syndrome - or Lack of Money Incentive Kills Innovation

2011-07-11T22:55:00.000+02:00

I think one day, it will be called like that.

Let's face it, there are not many thing that in this world that were less inventive than Google search, and I would say that in IT there are no such things for sure. What would you say if someone offered you that bulky functionless mobile phone with black and white screen that were produced 10 years ago? And that is more or less what Google did... Just a few changes of side features in 10 years, nothing more.

It comes to my mind that some options that were previously in Advanced search came into Sidebar, and are more easily accessible. Yes they have also added Google Instant Search recently. Well they have added and removed some search results related features, but none of them proved to be useful. Currently you have +1 and site preview, previously there were tools to do something like wiki with search results, but they proved no value and were removed, and I don't see that +1 will have better value either. C'mon guys, even Coke had more changes in those years!

Now Microsoft holds for not so innovative company... And probably there is and reason for that, it has held monopoly on operating systems for more than 2 decades. But let's track even that Microsoft. At the beginning of 80s, it released MS-DOS. In the beginning of 90s it released MS Windows 3.0, its first usable graphical user interfaces operating system. In the beginning of 00s it released Windows XP, which was its first really stable system, and interface drastically evolved in previous decade from application oriented to document oriented with many new features. And now, at the beginning of 10s, Microsoft is to release Windows 8, that will totally break with most previous concepts.

That might lead you to think - is there are reason for that? And the answer is simple - no money incentive. Microsoft may not innovate and it would get a whole lot money in that case too, as people would still buy Windows, but there is a catch in that - they won't buy as fast... everyone will wait for new computer (and probably even postpone such shoppings). To Google innovation doesn't lead to more revenues. It can expect the same people to come in same volume.

But yes, there is a problem with that, as Google search will become obsolete one day. Probably Steve Ballmer thought that he can offer souped up Google search as Bing and present it as revolutionary technology, but users are not that stupid and it didn't pass. Even if Bing seems to become a bit better than Google, it is just not enough for ordinary people to think and risk to switch. But if Microsoft is to offer a really revolutionary search, then things might just change, and Google might be just wiped out. And while I am sure that Microsoft has something in test phase when Ballmer talks about this, something is more sure, and that is Watson. It won Jeopardy, and it is shooting for some verticals like sales and healthcare where Google would shoot if he had technology. Probably it can't scale to so many topics and so many searches that web has now, but it is a matter of time. And Google is spending time thinking about Google +?

What is the problem with Microsoft Office Ribbon?

2010-12-13T23:00:00.000+01:00

I had some issue with Microsoft's Ribbon interface (first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007). Actually, I think many people had more or less trouble using it. So I was thinking how to sum it up, what Microsoft did wrong, and where it placed its risky, but reasonable bets that might seem wrong but a necessary to obtain long-term viability of the product:

Incompatible with previous knowledge - actually this is not up to Ribbon, but to its implementation in Microsoft Office 2007. Microsoft just changed some of its classifications of Tools, as they are not classified the same way as they were in menus and toolbars. I think it was too much to change both things at the same time
Visually chaotic - again, this could be implemented different way with same Ribbon technology, but it seems that at this moment Microsoft prefers this implementation. So, while I think it is a good thing that some icons are bigger, the way of their layout on Ribbon makes you feel disoriented. Over the time, your spatial memory will probably get used to it.
Non efficient for using rare options - menus seem to be better here. If you go for some option you just need at that time, and it is not a rare user pattern Ribbon doesn't do well. It doesn't come back to most frequently needed tools, but it leaves you on some special toolbar you might not really need. So, you must click to go back where you want. It hurts productivity. Even if you get used to it. And it will help you not to want to get used to it.

But the real gain is in Easy access to a lot of tools, specially the ones that you had to go through dialogs to use them, and you have them at a touch of the hand.

Users don't need to be system integrators

2010-12-07T22:38:00.002+01:00

As Jobs said, today.

It is something simple, and something that everybody should know, but at the end it is rarely implemented well. I remember when I was school age, I enjoyed tweaking every single visible and hidden setting to get the best experience. But now, I realize it takes time and it is just that someone didn't bother to make it right for me.

But there's more than what Steve said. Users don't want to install apps at all. Well unless they are more media than app (consider games, you will want new game because the old one will become boring after time). They want everything readily setup on their phone. And that's where, as said in my previous post, Nokia still has some advantages.

How Nokia sells phones?

2010-12-03T17:40:00.002+01:00

Well, even with all bad reviews, Nokia is still company that sells most phones.

Obviously, the answer is that there are many different consumers. And not only staff that reviews phones buy them - many folks do and they might have different needs.

Some people want cheap phones - it could be because they can't afford better. But also, it could be because you don't want to carry 500 € device with yourself - possibly because you may lose it, drop and damage it, or in the worst case it might even attract someone to steal it and possibly even attack you.

But it is not really just that. If people pay more money, they want the thing that just works. Well, at least most of them, some geeks might want the thing that can be tweaked most. And Nokia performs pretty well here:

GPS - well OVI maps are free for Nokia phones, and they are probably best mobile maps
Camera - Nokia was performing well here, and Nokia N8 is just to claim the best mobile camera
Phone quality - as a traditional mobile phone company Nokia was always on top here

So, many people want just this, and if Nokia does it very well, and is price competitive (except in US where it has poor relations with carriers), then it is logical that many people buy even Nokia top models that seem to have no chance to compete with Android phones or iPhones according to reviews.

Yes, I know that Nokia is less fun to use (with poor touch interface), and lags in applications... but how many people really care? General user pattern should be that your phone is your backup portable device - you use it if you don't have anything else. Yes, there are mobile games... But why would you use it if you have Playstation or Xbox or PC at your hands?

RockMelt search

2010-11-09T14:21:00.002+01:00

You've probably heard of RockMelt, a browser funded by Marc Andeerssen, a Netscape founder. Well, before start, view video with its features:

Well, considering social features, it seems like a bit simplified Flock to me. So might be useful for someone, but not for everyone.

But most people got excited over its search, and it is one of highlights. Well, it has some features from my concept from two years ago, but if you read the critics to the design of browser at that time, you will see that it doesn't solve most of them, actually you still have two separate boxes which will finally confuse users and push them to use just one of them, actually omitting the features of the other one.

Cloudy weather

2010-10-02T16:08:00.002+02:00

Computer cloud applications are definetly in fashion, however many people opposed that web applications should take over client side application. I think that there is a reason for that that many people are not even aware.

First of all, many people invest in applications while using it. The most obvious investment is if they create something while using it. And in general, data structures are not fully standardized. Sometimes they are (like email or images or video) and those are actually most widespread cloud applications, as you can see. Then there are mostly standardized formats, like office documents. Though it is likely that you can open such documents in another application, it is also likely that now and then some details might be not the same as in original. Finally, there are data that are not fully standardized. Like Facebook data. Actually there is no way to export such data.

Other than that, even if application becomes some sort of part of your life, your habit is a little investment. If you cannot use it anymore, you will feel a bit of deprived.

So, there comes cloud as a problem (and generally software as a service). If you own application, you can open your data. And probably you can install it even on another computer under certain condtions, so it can last forever. However, you cannot do the same if your application is in cloud. You depend on continuity of cloud application.

And there, problems turn from theory to reality. I had one such (data) loss. There was a site called Furl. It was the only bookmarking site that did full text saving of web page. The advantage was obvious. If you bookmarked something, you could access it forever. And you could search for the actual page content, not just tags or titles. Yes, it was all nice until... Looksmart management decided to sell the service to another similar service which did not support full page indexing and so everything you believed you had was lost. I would did much better if I stored my data in some Firefox addons (like Scrapbok), I wouldn't be able to access everything from every computer, but I would at least not lose some data. And now I see that another bookmarking service, Xmarks is about to be shut down. It is a good thing that you will have all your data also stored locally, so there won't be any data loss, but you will lose some functionality you got used to.

And you can say, so what, I will keep with big guys (companies), and they won't shut down. Well there are two problems with that. First of all, most of innovation comes from small companies, so if this prevails you can expect innovation to decline. And it is not good. But other than that, you're not really safe with big companies either. Wasn't there web app called Google Lively? Or will there be an end to Google Wave? Yes, they were in beta, but most people that used them invested something in them, and they will lose it. List goes on with Microsoft's Live blogging platform, though it seems that users will be able to export their data to Wordpress, will there be some problems with that we shall see. And even Furl I used wasn't really from small guys.

And problems don't end there. There was a promise of cloud computing that you will have just cheap and energy efficient machines as operations would move to the server. But web apps can't do that. You will have to have at least one good old fat client to backup things locally. Just in case, you need at least one full computer that has ability to do that, but probably you will do the trade off just in case if something is mobile.

So to put things simple, cloud is expanding, but mostly in areas where it offers some sort of new functionality to users - like backup where you are now able to backup to another geographically distant area and increase safety, and also in cases where it is economically viable and you can extract data whenever you want, or you can store it to local disk. Other than that, people are still buying applications, and probably will do that for a long time.

Possibly, you will really have a thin clients and lease some virtual machine, but that virtual machine just needs to be transfarable. It might add up things to the cloud. But then it will change mostly your hardware, not the way you use your computer.

My file manager

2010-09-25T02:30:00.008+02:00

Ufff, this was about commenting on bad sides of current software design... Later I tried to create some mockups as a proposal of what should be done to improve the things.

But finally, I decided to do the real thing - creating a real application, a file manager that will help you to easily navigate and organize your files.

Now as this is yet pre-beta stage, you can find only some general information on the company site. But stay tuned, real good things are coming!

Access bar could be so powerful

2008-11-20T19:51:00.004+01:00

Some time ago, I posted about Access bar and Natural language navigation. Part of it was implemented in Firefox 3. But after using Firefox 3, I find that applied concepts have many shortcomings:

I see that most people still don't use natural language, but are rather using location bar the same old way. I guess that big part of the problem is that there are two boxes, and one is not sure which one he should use. Eventually it might be the case sometimes even with the expert users (myself), as they are not sure whether they have something in history or not. If I am not sure where to type, I search Google, as it is more sure that I will get the result. After a time it turns into the habit;
just the fact that location bar has URL on it by default (except on start with blank page) translates into my subconscious need to type in URL and not natural language, not to say about influence on discoverability - finally, you shouldn't be typing natural language in the box with URL;
if you try to search bookmarks using location bar, many times they won't appear, so you have to go to Library and repeat the thing. And then after a time you go directly to Library to avoid the hustle. It might even happen with history, but it is more rare case so it doesn't turn into habit.
Sometimes I am not sure which result is the wanted result, and if I am wrong, I have to search again
Obvious complaint is that location bar searches only Titles, and not the full page, so it might be the case that I am not able to find keyword.

All in all, my perception is that it has usability (but limited) for me, and not so much for the average user.

Now, the solution:

So the main idea is:

keep just one box (access bar) for navigating the Internet, and make it the box that appears first. This box is more like a search bar, as location bar is now moved to the right, and its only purpose is to show URL. Location bar is disabled and you can't type in. If you click on it I guess it should have an icon to copy URL. Access bar will now show your previous search, and thus instruct you that you should normally continue with another search.
the hardest part - integrate Google search into results. Here is how it should work - based on the frecency of results from its index browser calculates quality of internal results and decides how many slots it should reserve for the Google results and what should be their position. There should be always at least one slot for this purpose, and those slots are indicated by search icon. At first slots appear disabled, and when users pauses typing, they fill in with results (just like Inquisitor extension). Of course, whenever you use Google, you also get sponsored results, as Google wouldn't provide this any other way. The one who doesn't like may disable this in options.
this is not dropdown, but overlay on page. The purpose is to make it possible to middle click results and keep overlay shown as tabs are opening in the background. I put even pin icon, so that users not familiar with middle clicking or control clicking (and unfortunately there are lot of them) can open multiple pages in background with plain clicking. Of course there should be also and keyboard shortcut to do this, like shift+alt+enter
at the bottom of the overlay there is the option to continue search through one of the options: History, Bookmarks, Google, other engines. Ideally, Firefox should collect all engines one ever searched (like Chrome) and show it here, but by order of how many times one used them for searching. Eventually, they may disappear after some time of not using, to keep things cleaner.
of course, there are Google suggestions in tooltip. One can switch to them by pressing right arrow, or by clicking mouse.

Just to note that things would have looked a bit cleaner if tabs were on top (like Chrome), as you could get overlay closer to access bar. But it would also look very good with Sidebar navigation I have mentioned before.

Focus on averarage consumer vs Focus on marginal consumer

2008-08-05T20:26:00.003+02:00

I guess there are two philosophies in making software - focus on marginal consumer and focus on average consumer.

Most software is made with focus on marginal consumer. That means that feature set is constantly expanded with focus on marginal consumer - the largest group of consumers whose needs were not covered. So, with every version we get more and more features and eventually they become more and more useless for general user. It is not hard to think of companies that practiced this philosophy - Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk - actually most of software leaders.

On the other hand, focus on the average consumer means that software focuses on one group and tries to satisfy its needs. Features are added just if they are really useful for that group. Otherwise, in new version you should expect that interaction with current features is improved, but again not by adding some subfeatures that are useful to some marginal group, but in the way that most of the users may benefit. I guess that best examples of this group are: Mozilla Corporation, Apple, Palm (though it failed to do anything of n0te in near time).

Part producers are dead, long live integrators!

2008-06-02T20:19:00.002+02:00

Not so long ago, it was enough just have fastest part. Just add some more Ghz to processors, and Windows would act faster, and it was a clear win on the market. The same goes to RAM, hard disk, or anything. In such world, part producers were the kings.
But now, climate has changed. Adding some more Ghz just won't make your browsing or typing faster. It is the time for integrators to jump the wagon. The main goal of the integrators is to take components to produce unique experience, eventually adding some custom made components that are not available on the market and are essential part of particular experience.
So, we have several examples of people that took this seriously and made some real fame:

Apple - the only company that always tried to be integrator, and eventually found its moment. Ipod+Itunes? It is integration. Hadware+software=Mac. iPod+phone=+iPhone. And not to forget custom chips like ones being made by Intel
Nintendo - Wii has all generic components, but with nunchuck controller and added integration magic it rules the world
Asus - with eee PC making bringing all other manufacturares to shame. But unfortunalely without much custom parts, so it will be quickly copied by others.

But, in every race there are losers:

Microsoft - Vista was released for era of part producers. At a hurry Microsoft extended XP home life for low cost PCs. But it will make troubles for corporations - if you buy eee PC, with Win XP home, you can't use it in your corporate Network. And it is likely that many CIOs will be interested in eee Box - it consumes much less electricity, produces less heat, takes less space and doing the same thing. But can't work with Windows Server. It will be a big push for Linux.
Sony - Blue ray won the game, but the question is who will need such bulky storage? MacBook Air and Asus eee Box won't
AMD - the company that first touted that x86 instrucions should be used from top to the bottom of the market was overrun by Intel that got it how to pack x86 into small, low-power and low cost component

How to make software companies compete?

2008-04-29T11:40:00.002+02:00

I don't think that it is too hard to conclude that software ecosystem is flawed. Just look at the history. I am not aware of any industry that led to such high market shares and monopolies in almost every segment you can think of (should I mention Windows, MS Office, Photoshop, Quark, AutoCAD).

I think that in the terms of market economy you can say that software competition is too expensive, and that market found an answer that optimal solution, under current conditions/limitations, is to have one dominant player. It is just too expensive to have several non-compatible platforms last for long time, and we all know that (Betamax and VHS couldn't live forever, HD-DVD and Blue-ray too).

Those software monopolies are however much different than those private-standard monopolies like VHS. It is because everyone can license VHS (including Sony, which was on Betamax side) and make his own player, which might even become best selling machine thanks to producer's further inventions and marketing. Of course, private standard owners will get their royalties, but they can't have everything just because they have the standard.

So, it turned out that one dominant player was short-term cost optimized solution, but in the long term it causes a lot of problems. As barriers to entry became very high, classical solution that new player will appear was not relevant - and those that tried usually failed. But market found one possible way to restore competition - support open-source movement. Generally speaking, it wouldn't be a healthy way for normal market to function as open-source, but in the terms of current conditions in software markets, it brings competition to market and thus improves its health.

And then, there come the patents. If you want Gmail like experience, you must use Google, as it only has patent on that. Even if everything else is flawed, you must stick to it. The same goes for iTunes, iPod and Apple. As companies seem to embrace patents much more now than they did before (Apple lost case to Microsoft because it relied on copyrights and not patents), this will make competition even harder - may I say that iPod market share would be standard to follow. On the other hand, I can't just say no to patents (just like some people do) - Apple took a lot of time, money, effort and employed best people to make iPod, and it is not OK that someone else can copy that with no sweat.

So, I want to return to one my idea that I had 15 years ago - software should not be sold as applications, but as features. Generally speaking, it means:

there are subapplication level standards that allow features to communicate - they should be made OS wide (for example, Mozilla search bar could take user input and translate it to URL and send it to any rendering engine);
probably there should be some non-profit organization that enacts standards to ensure this;
software producers would have to have price list that has price for every feature they sell;
people would buy software from something like OEMs - they would pack different features from different producers together and sell it (they would have discount from vendors which could form part of their profits);
one could buy features from different vendors and make his own suite, but most people won't do it;
if software producers had patents on something they must license it and cost of license cannot go beyond some percentage of listed price (e.g. 30%);
if someone builds patent upon someone's patent, he could took 30% from his selling price with his license cost deducted;
it would be nice to have site/sites which would sell certified software features.

I think that this would improve market condition in several ways:

Consumers would buy only features they need.

Software producers must focus on exact consumer needs to increase their revenues
Software producers would get feedback if they develop something which is not valued by market and would cease such developments (which might not be the case now)
Consumers would pay more fair price - if one knows just to use several features of Microsoft Word, but he respects the speed of this program and wants to use it, he would pay less than some people that need more things

There would be room for more market players

People wouldn't buy everything from one company - one company cannot be best in everything, and thus different company would find their smaller or bigger niches and would have stable revenues to finance further development.
Even small companies would have chance to invent something in the world of e.g. Office software. You wouldn't have to write Microsoft Office from scratch just to introduce one new feature.

People would be able to get the best of the breed - as said before, no software company is best in everything. So, why would you use two programs of the same kind where one can do one thing good and other can do other thing good and constantly switch from one to another, when you could combine their features in one nifty application?

People would be able to use best features across different applications. It is obvious that graphical programs usually fall behind in text editing to text processors. But why would you be limited to use features from those programs. If you like the way Microsoft introduced live preview of fonts, why you wouldn't be able to buy that feature, ask your computer to install it? It searches then all the places where font dialog appears, lists it, and ask you to confirm replacement.

Patent owners would get fair prize for their work, but patents wouldn't stop competition and innovation from developing.

Of course, you can think of downsides of this approach:

More administration/standardization may slow innovation - in general it is right, but in the long run it is the competition and reward that drives innovation, and I can't think of more competitive environment than this
Things would become too complex for consumers - though it is true that things would be more complex, it is also true that you can chose among large number of options when you buy hardware, and it still works. Also, don't consumers feel nice when they can buy just one song on iTunes store or build compilation they like, instead of getting whatever is offered out of box and they don't need?
Compatibility problems may occur - it is also truth for hardware. OEMs are there to resolve them. If you want to resolve them yourself, then you should know what you are doing.

Eventually, I see two possible solutions that would drive the world to this system:

Government would realize that software competition is flawed and enact new system
Consumers and competition to dominant players would response in an open-source fashion and make claims to build and use this system.

I hope that people that read this are aware that this is just an outline of idea and it is not solution for every single aspect of problem. I stumbled upon several things which made me think that it would make implementation impossible, but after some thinking I found how they can fit in.

Natural Languange Navigation, a bit more

2007-07-07T00:39:00.000+02:00

After showing idea in previous post, there are several more things I would like to explain user scenarios. This interface is made for two things: when user wants to see site he visited, and when user wants to visit new site and is very well aware of what he is looking for (like specific company, institution or product site). In first case (which is more frequent) he uses left column of drop-down. In the second case he uses two other columns.

I think that with this concept, unifying of search bar and location bar is not necessary, as search bar should keep its functionality when user does complex searches and searches for something generic, as whole search engine page is necessary then, and it is easier to get it through search bar. Also, user may want to submit data to different forms and sites, and search bar is handy in that case.

Natural Languange Navigation, finally

2007-07-06T00:30:00.000+02:00

I have touched this topic at Access bar. After some rethinking, this is how it looks at this point:

This means that user should not type in URLs any more, and that natural language is used for navigation. Of course, user can type in URLs, as browser can easily recognize them and follow them, but this is just a backup solution, and it shouldn't be primary way of navigation. As user types in, he gets Google suggestion (and form history) in the tooltip. Pressing the left key moves pointer to tooltip, and it is very easy to select whole the phrase.

On the other hand, drop down has three parts - History of visited pages, Google search and Google sponsored searched (I am talking about Google here as Firefox default engine, probably it could be other search engine too). Every column contains list with page titles and domain URL. Though I would prefer total removal of domain URL, at this point it is still useful to ensure that there is no fishing. History column is replacement for old address bar list (but should bring to ease of use due to Natural language navigation), while Google search is something innovative and should add up both to productivity and ease of use. Sponsored search is something that is definitely necessary, as it is hard to imagine that Google would give away so much revenue. Eventualy, in this column ad text could be possible, as it might be required by publishers.

And when the user comes to new site, its domain name should appear in access bar, to ensure that user is aware of the site he visits and to prevent fishing.

Finally, this concept should work well with Sidebar navigation, as it has no permanent wide elements (though drop-down is very wide :) ).

Sidebar navigation

2007-06-29T21:03:00.000+02:00

Though there is no clear statistics on this (as different sources may vary), I think that most people will have 1280+ horizontal resolution within 3 years. And large subset of this will be wide screens, which vertical resolution won't be significantly higher than today's standard 768. Unfortunately, just small part of this will have pivot function to make them vertically oriented.

In such environment most documents will leave unused horizontal space, which should be used for something meaningful by the programs. At this point, I will focus solely on how this problem should be solved with web documents/browsers. First of all, though web design may vary in the future, wide sites are not likely to appear, as reading too wide columns is not ergonomic and you can expect unused horizontal space to appear here.

The idea is to move all navigation to sidebar. That way, all vertical space is freed up, while only horizontal space that is expected to be unused is used for navigation. Of course, easier said than done. Some of the elements will be tighter than they are today, and there is lot more free space that should be filled with something meaningful. So, here is the mock-up of what I propose:

Keep in mind some remarks:

Address bar is much smaller. Even current UI elements of Firefox used here would function much better if they were a bit less wide. With this width, there is no sense to display all URLs, but it is not a big problem, as they are not meaningful anyway. I would suggest Natural language navigation to fill that gap, but will leave it for the next post.
Search bar is a bit smaller, but it shouldn't be a problem
Navigation buttons are the same, I just tweaked them a bit from Firefox - Stop/Reload button is already standard in Opera/Safari, and unified back/forward history from IE7 is also a good stuff.
The rest of the space is used for different sorts of link collections

Hidden tabs - there might be more intuitive name for this, but it relates to tabs that are not shown on tabbar due to tab overflow. At this point, tab overflow is not discoverable - try to open tab in background while overflow is active, and you'll have no feedback that something is happening. With this solution, hidden tabs area would increase its size by 1 slot (and history would lose that one slot) where newly opened tab would appear. And with some nice smooth scrolling animation it would look very cool. And if lists get too big, there could be scroll bar on right side. Personally, I had big trouble using current list of tabs in Firefox as list contains both visible and invisible tabs, which makes it too big, while I think that proposed hidden tab list would be very user friendly.
Recently closed tab is another function that is totally indiscoverable in Firefox. Same smooth scroll animation would make it very effective and easy to use.
Bookmarks could be solved in different styles - at this point I think that there should be top used bookmarks, while pressing the + sign area would significantly increase and show all current bookmarks (thus no need for bookmarks menu).
History is just least of recently opened page, and it reduces the need to keep that item in menu.

With all these changes, menu bar becomes narrow enough to fit into sidebar,and there is no need to extend it to the full line. Actually, current menus were made at the time when resoulution 640x480 was widespread, and they really took whole the screen. Now it is really time to revise whole the system.

And, as said before, this new concept adds a lot of more visible vertical screen. Here is native Firefox for comparison:

Segmentation is the software future

2007-05-18T23:38:00.000+02:00

Current software has business origin. When personal computers started (and that is around 25 years ago), they were also technology driven, just like almost every innovation. That means they were more focused on pushing technology limits further, than on making things friendly for business users. As time passed by, user orientation started to appear, and it improved over years. As Microsoft was and still is dominant in this area, the development can be tracked in transition from MS-DOS to Windows and constant improvement from one Windows version to another (most significantly from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95). But still, this user friendliness was business user friendliness. If it was more home user friendly, it was to large extent a plain accident.

After some time, people at Microsoft probably realized this, and they did something to improve at home user field by relasing Windows Media Center Edition. Though it is a huge step forward, one must say that this just a patch for the system that was never projected with home users in mind.

On the other hand, most of the software-hardware platforms that were more oriented towards home user extincted in the early 90s. Amiga and Atari are leading examples of this. The most close relative that survived evolution is MacOS. And it is not an accident that it excels in home environment.

It is not hard to conclude that home users and business users have significantly different needs, and that future software should be developed for each group separately. At home, people expect their computers to work like gadgets, and software should focus on that. At business, people expect their computers to be productive and secured machines, in most situations for document/information crunching. I think that both segments are more than big enough to be economically viable. Unfortunately, current software mostly forgets about home users and treats them just like business users. And business users don't pass here perfectly either, as they get unwanted and distracting piece of bundle that home users might want, just to ensure that everyone will feel fine.

Just to say that I think that this relates to most pieces of software one can imagine. For example, browsers. Business users usually need to track some information which regularly appears/updates on some site. Last generations of browsers have several tools for this like RSS integration and opening several tabs as home page which might help. But browsers were not made with this idea in mind, they are just versatile machines which may also work in this situation. On the other hand, home users are more after fun, news reading, connecting with others. And again, browsers help in this but they were not made for this.

Gadget OS

2007-04-30T23:07:00.000+02:00

I have been using Palm Treo 680 (with Palm OS), which is a total opposition to document-centric approach, and to be fair, I was positively impressed. Not to say that document-centric approach is not good, and that all my writing here is a waste of time.

First of all, document-centric is good approach if you deal with a lot of documents. Then you need tools to manage them. And on your mobile phone you don't have too much items that must be treated like documents. Even on your home computer this could be a favorable approach.

Second, you don't need to group heterogeneous document under one cap at home in most cases. In business you always need folders.

Third, implementing document-centric approach, but not in full extent, could be a bit confusing, and implementation that ignores this approach in maximal extend could be quite logical.

Recycle bin mystery

2007-03-10T23:16:00.000+01:00

I just found out that (in a corporate environment with Windows Server) you don't have recycle bin when you delete something from the desktop. That's because you have separate physical recycle bins for files on your hard disk, files on your Server (in My documents), but the one for the desktop is not defined as it is not in either of the mentioned Places...

Tabs - a solution or workaround?

2006-12-19T00:02:00.000+01:00

This is the time when everybody are crazy about the tabs. Though they have appeared in programs a long time ago, Firefox really brought them to fame, and when IE7 included them, they became de facto standard feature.

Comparing the tab browsing and tabless browsing (or to be pricize taskbar browsing, as you then use taskbar to manage several windows), it is pretty straightforward that tab bar brings several advantages:

Site icon on every tab - it is much easier to spot the site if it has its own icon

Easy switching of documents - as there is no redrawing of whole window

Leaving the space on the taskbar - as it can get very crowded if you also open several applications

Easier closing of tabs

Ability to rearange tab order - at least in Firefox

So tabs seem like very good solution. Unless you ask yourself - could the same thing be achieved with taskbar? And the answer is yes:

Icon in taskbar could show documents. The fact that it shows program icon is a reflection of application-centric approach, and the lack of Document centric approach. So, this doesn't have to do anything with websites - it would be much easier if every single document on the taskbar had its own icon. Of course, it would require some innovative solutions - external sources would probably have its own icons (like web sites) - your images and other visual documents could have scaled down image as icon, and your other documents could have icon that is shared by the documents in the same folder.

Quick switching of documents in the same application is not a problem, neither. If it can be done by user input within application window, it can be done from the taskbar, too. Application should just get inquiry from taskbar to switch, and do exactly the same thing it does when switching tab.

And keeping the taskbar clean? In today's environment it is necessity, but it comes at great price. First of all you are losing vertical screen estate, as now you have two bars instead of just taskbar. In the era of wide screen, it is not good at all (Though I certainly suggest using of pivot LCD screen oriented vertically). And if you want to switch from one document within one application to another document in another application, it is likely that you will need two clicks, one on taskbar and another on tab bar. So, what taskbar really lacks is overflow solution, and not the patch with tab bar.

Ah, yeah, it is nice to close tabs with just single click on close button (or middle clicking it anywhere), to have ability to close easy all tabs but active in context menu... But hey, this can be all done on taskbar, just no one implemented it yet!

And rearranging of tabs is also a nice thing, but again, no limits to applying the same thing to the taskbar.

To conclude - tabs are good, but just to the extent that taskbar is bad.

Access bar

2006-12-06T23:01:00.000+01:00

This is feature that your future browser should have. You are probably very well aware that web site addresses (aka as URL) are not user friendly. Using URLs is exactly like asking people to learn MS-DOS commands to handle files.

Most people are not aware of even single URL. In reality people are only aware of brand names, so if www. + brand name + .com works everything is fine, if it doesn't then there is trouble. And if one is after some specific page, which might be: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox, situation is more or less helpless.

So let's switch to my father. He navigates the Internet by typing in what he wants to find in search box of a browser, and then he selects page he wants to go to from search results. It is very intuitive, almost always works, and everyone can learn within seconds. Still there is a problem with this type of navigation in today's browsers - this is thought to be only second way of navigating, which means it is far from productive, and fairly unsupported.

So, let's ditch both address and search bar from your browser and keep just one box that handles both thing: Access bar. It should act like following:

Drop down of address bar should show on its top several pages that are visited, whose title (or better whole content) matches phrase in access bar, and they should be ordered by frequency of visit, it should be possible to expand list if necessary;

Next section should be devoted to top search engine results, which should be also expandable (and there should be general option to show both title and text description);

Finally, there should be several search engines listed, to do full search with keywords in Access bar (and this part should be also expandable);

It should be easy to recognize if someone types in URL, as every single word processor does this, and in this case browser should go to exactly that address.

One should also note that browser must provide solution to mix search results with sponsored search in search results section, as it is highly unlikely that this would be implemented otherwise, as it would have negative commercial effects.

A welcome note

2006-07-24T20:39:00.001+02:00

Well, every blog has the beginning. So here we start...

Taking the job of the CFO of one mid-sized firm (that employs 550 workers), I've noticed that current OS-es and programs really don't fit into my work process as they should. I use Windows XP on my job, but I also have Ubuntu Linux at home, and I am not fully satisfied with either of them.

Problem is just one piece of equation, resolving is another. My inspiration came from Ben Goodger, a man that is leading Firefox developer. I was a bit stunned with his blog post. I don't fully agree with Ben, actually, I only agree with the thing that there is a problem, but it made me think more about how much our software is obsolete, and how it should be. Other than that, I am surely inspired with Firefox development, which I followed almost from the beginning, but as I take approach from "blank paper", without burden of current features, I may also disagree with some current browser concepts (including those in Firefox). Talking about browsers, I won't downplay Internet Explorer 6, not because it doesn't deserve so, but because it should be more than obvious.

Some things I am proposing would probably be fairly easy to implement, as they are more like add-on to current system, but the others would require deeper architectural changes. As I am not a programmer (unless someone my knowledge of Visual Basic for Application, SQL and HTML/CSS doesn't takes for programming) I won't bother too much with this - I am taking more of managerial approach, defining what your computer should do.

You should take my first sentence literally - many things that I am writing about are more likely to apply to business use than typical home use. I mean, if your computer is just gaming computer, then OS function is just to help you start one of the installed games. And how can one make innovative interface there?