iPad

There has been talk about Apple’s new iPad where a lot of the grief comes from the fact that the device doesn’t support Adobe Flash. If I’m not mistaken, I believe everyone already recognizes that this device is meant only for consumption. It is a media consumption device that is not meant to produce media. This is why so many people are upset at Apple’s stance against Flash; it is an integral part of surfing the internet. That said, Flash is a plugin (read: “app”) whose features cannot be approved or disapproved by Apple. As it stands, Flash can do too many things and in a negative way for Apple.

• Users could play free Flash-based games rather than pay for them.
• Developers could build apps in Flash rather than on the iPhone platform.
• Apple cannot regulate the type of apps you use if these apps are Flash and located on a web page.
• Apple cannot regulate what new features Adobe decides to add into Flash.
• Flash can theoretically circumvent some iPhone/iPod/iPad security features.
• Flash developers could create interfaces that mimic and/or confuse –even trick—users.
• Flash is processor-intensive and might affect a user’s experience on the device.

Apple’s decision to ban Adobe Flash is definitely controversial. However, as a business and technical decision, it’s one that has been thought out very thoroughly. There are a lot of intelligent people at Apple and these decisions weren't made on a whim. Adobe, as with the rest of Apple users, can argue this out, the fact still remains: Flash can do too many things that can negative affect the iPhone experience.

(BTW, I still love my Blackberry)

Hacks

A coworker of mine recently sent me a link to a website that showcased what CSS is capable of doing in terms of mimicking Javascript rollovers and basic behaviours. Although the site did appear to work as stated, I opened up the source code to discover extraneous hidden HTML markup that littered the page. With this new information, I’d have to say that the CSS didn’t work as stated.

CSS is supposed to contain the presentation markup. Javascript holds the behavioural scripting. HTML holds the content. When CSS is used to replace Javascript by means of littering on the page content, this becomes a hack. Using HTML and CSS to create behavioural hacks to do what Javascript can easily do. It’s a cool concept to execute, a poor architecture for implementation.

Streaming media

Nintendo recently announced that they've partnered with NetFlix in order to stream on-demand movies from their Wii platform. I'm sure this deal with a lucrative one for Nintendo, but I can't help but think of it as an unsafe business move. With both Microsoft and Sony prepping to release their own motion-sensing peripherals, how will Nintendo stay competitive?

First and foremost, I would think that consoles need to be able to play games and play a large selection of games. I don't need my console to stream movies or produce a slideshow of my vacation photos or connect to the weather channel. I bought it because I want to play games. That said, what has Nintendo done to attract developers to their platform?

Both Sony and Microsoft have put a lot of time, effort and money into creating development tools and packages that give developers the ability to produce games. This is vital for a healthy development community. If there is a limited number of developers creating games for the Wii, there is a limited number of games.

And what is the value in buying a console when there aren't any good games for it?

Forgiveness

While chatting with one of the interaction architects at work, he brought upon a topic I have to agree with. Users are very much willing to "forgive" usability mistakes under certain circumstances. For example, when Apple came out with the "puck mouse" back in the late 90s, advanced computer users hated it. Whenever a user placed their hand down on the mouse, they would need to stop working and look at the mouse in order to determine the orientation.

Round mice are a design flaw.

However, Apple users being the enthusiasts they are, willingly forgave Apple because they have a lot of appreciation for the brand. I find this to be a common theme. People are willing to overlook and forgive mistakes when there is a pre-existing emotional attachment to the product or brand. iPhone's initial lack of MMS? Apple iTV? Forgiving is what Apple users do.

Feeds

When I was first introduced to RSS feeds, the purpose of it didn't make any sense to me. At the time, feed readers would essentially grab the feed and display the content. Each site had their own feed so even if I were to use a feed reader, I'd still need to go through 10 separate feeds to read my news. RSS never solved the issue with aggregation. In order to stay alive, they should have done two things:

1. A unified tagging scheme. Every website had their own way of producing RSS feeds and it was completely unnecessary. Unify the code!
2. Timestamping. Rather than creating an ambiguous date/time scheme, have all RSS carry a GMT stamp so that the client can determine the relative time.

These two things would have given users the ability to aggregate their feeds chronologically because for them to do this would have meant users could have gone to one place to get their news; they wouldn't need to click on 20 different "feed" buttons from a feed reader. And do you know what an aggregated feed reader that sorts its news postings chronologically? Twitter.

Limitations and Guidelines

I've been working on a project where one of the personal goals I have set for myself is to try and maintain a consistent user experience. I'm well aware that "user experience" is often used quite loosely and if I were to ask a dozen people, I'd receive a dozen different answers. Regardless, I do think it's necessary to bring to light some of the things that have been surfacing in my head lately about online software development.

I'll first start by saying that I feel it's always necessary to maintain standards. Just as much as the iPhone has a consistent "swiping" animation, these visual aids --whether they're animation, behavioural or even just an underline on a text link-- need consistency. A user should be able to predict what happens when a cursor hovers over a button or when it is clicked. Intuitive design requires a level of predictability.

Even though the creative team has been rather reluctant with setting "limitations" to creativity, I've been trying to set guidelines. These guidelines are rudimentary at best, but they include standards for CSS, animation and behaviours on a per-project basis. Perhaps this may prove to hinder our designers, but I can't comprehend how ten different button rollover animations will help the end-user other than confuse them.

Fonts

An interesting thing occurred just now. I wandered onto a Flash-based website and when I was about to start browsing, Mac OS X displayed a warning telling me that the application (Adobe Flash) was trying to access a specific font in my system. I'm conflicted. In terms of security, this feature is great. Yet in terms of usability, I think this is horrible.

This is the hypocrite in me speaking. I absolutely love the security features that Mac OS X has and have no reservations in tending to a few additional burdens provided that they are required. However, if I were a Flash developers with the intention of building an online Flash application, it would be upsetting to know that a portion of my audience base would get a security warning concerning them about a particular font.