Friday 3 November 2006

No More Next Page: Embracing the Non-Linear Web

For many years I’ve pointed out that the Web is essentially a non-linear environment. Yet, we insist on imposing linear processes and function on it. I’ve long felt this imposition has been far more limiting to innovative thinking than any other influence, including the cry for standards and best practices.

In workflow, linear patterns are not effective because web sites and web applications are inherently non-linear. Web sites and apps are also iterative, requiring cyclical attention for the entirety of their lifespan.

I compare the process of creating, and then maintaining a real-world, working web site or application to pregnancy: You’ve got the incubation period, where months go by in developing and perfecting the entity.

Then, there’s the birth, which is rarely peaceful and usually involves lots of screaming and crying followed by an exhaustion that seems to never leave. At this point, you can’t abandon the outcome. Our baby here, our web site or app, is going to require parenting for the rest of its days. It will have to be nurtured, guided, even corrected. Over and over and over again.

In design, linear patterns can only work for very specific pagination approaches. A good example would be paging through images on Flickr. Still, the mere existence of other pathways makes it nigh impossible to stay on a linear path on Flickr.

The Web’s non-linear environment calls us and it’s an opportunity to do better work. Which brings me to the inspiration for this little ditty, Pete Forde’s Endless Pageless: No More Next Page article and example, in which he shows a means of ending the “Next” phenomenon forever.

When I met Pete at The Ajax Experience last week, he (somewhat) jokingly said I’m sure we’ll argue on lots more stuff. In theory, I have no arguments with innovation, and I am obviously attracted to script-based techniques of any kind that move us into the realm of more imaginative, less linear interface options.

The only dissent I have, and it’s an important concern, has to do with the fact that with JavaScript turned off, the technique is non-functional. Which brings us to another issue entirely: Unobtrusive scripting and accessibility. I, and so many users truly want useful features of this nature, but we have to think from the ground-up and be inclusive, providing some way to still offer practical if not elegant function for those without the scripting support.

Filed under:   software, web design and development, theajaxexperience, ajax, rails, innovation, accessibility, javascript
Posted by:   Molly | 7:50 am | Comments (37)

Thursday 26 October 2006

ie7 Adoption Rate: Faster Than You Think?

The fantastic Ajax Experience Boston conference just wrapped up. It was an excellent event, attended by well-known industry luminaries alongside young Web developers and designers aching to learn as much as they can about JavaScript, Ajax, Rich Internet Apps, and something that’s made me very happy: A drive to understand great document structure and CSS.

The following transcript and video is an excerpt from Chris Wilson’s presentation. Chris is the Platform Architect for Internet Explorer. Here, he’s discussing why he believes the adoption rate of IE7 will be faster than we might think.

You can enjoy the video I grabbed of Chris presenting this information, in .mov format (2meg), provided here with express permission of Jay Zimmerman on behalf of the Ajax Experience, and Chris Wilson.

[There have been three million downloads of IE7] ” . . . and that’s in the first four days. From that, I think you can probably extrapolate actually the adoption curve is probably going to be fairly steep.

And as to the Windows XP question, turns out nearly 90% of the Windows based web share is running on XP. It’s running on XP or server 2003 actually, which we do offer IE7 for. So we actually hit 9 out of 10 users today and that continues to ramp up. Like the XP share continues to get bigger as people upgrade machines, or buy new machines, frequently.

So I think that you’ll actually see, and granted this is a little early since we’ve only been out for five days or something, you’ll actually see the curve on this will quickly be clear how soon we’ll get to ditch IE6 and I can’t really predict that, but I think you’ll find it’s going to be quicker than what most people expect today.”

- Chris Wilson, Microsoft

I’m sure there are many opinions to share, so have at it by entering your comments here.

Filed under:   professional, standards, software, WaSP, society, browsers, microsoft, ie7, theajaxexperience
Posted by:   Molly | 9:31 am | Comments (798)