Microsoft Skype?
I am scratching my head over this one. The NYTimes has a story this morning – “Microsoft in Talks to Acquire Skype for $8.5 Billion”. I am rather skeptical Skype is worth even half of that. I guess they don’t recall what happened to Ebay. From the article:
But the deal never lived up to its promise and eBay took a $1.4 billion write-down on its investment.
As it is, I don’t see how Skype has much of a business model beyond ads and some . The whole freemium model has always made me skeptical. Most people are going to go skype to skype which is free.
Uniformity, Conformity, Style and the UI
I just watched an interesting talk by John Gruber titled “The Gap Theory of UI Design” that he gave at Webstock ’11. The video can be found on vimeo. Since they don’t allow embedding I’ve linked. He goes over some good points, mostly regarding the idea of uniformity of look versus consistency and how they are not the same thing. Two points really jump out though. The first is that people want something that looks cool, the second thing he touches on briefly, even though he doesn’t call it that is the POLA principle.
POLA is an acronym for Principle of Least Astonishment. This is, to me, the most important factor of any UI design. It’s a pretty simple idea – any changes you make should be the least surprising for the user in question. My sense from looking at his presentation and how Apple has treated things like the HIG, the look of their OS, and the direction is has taken has shown a strong commitment to this principle. What Gruber points out, rightly, is that while things can look different they can still be consistent in how they behave. We have that in clothing. To use his example the button placement on a mens shirt.
The issue of designing versus styling really hit home over the weekend. In my web browsing I’ve noticed more and more the “Landing Strip” style of web design. It is mostly prevalent with template driven systems but I see it a lot of other places. What do I mean? It is not taking into account screen width possiblities when designing. I run on a widescreen monitor. My windows, as a result, tend to be wider versus longer. When I go to a page that is one huge, narrow strip it can be jarring to say the least.
This first screenshot is this blog. It suffers from this to a degree but the color and look makes it less jarring. I do need to work on this though.
This seconds screenshot is a great example of the landing strip. Note how on a wider monitor the whole thing feels a little squished. This is my WoW guild website. It is built with one of the hosting company templates. If I had the time I’d work on something much, much better.
The key to making this not happen is designing a resolution independent web. What is resolution independence? To quote the wiki -
In computing, resolution independence is the concept that elements on a computer screen can be drawn at sizes independent from the pixel grid.
This can be difficult, but is important to avoid the landing strip effect, it also is important to prevent what I call “The dead acres of whitespace” and the squished look on smaller displays. I think the idea of responsive design might be a good way to deal with this. At least that is what I’ve been looking at. I hope UI designers, especially web ones, take this principle and idea to heart. To paraphrase Guber quote “Design is how it works, Style is how it looks.” He is not the only one that marks this difference though. I’ve linked some other docs which talk about this. Some resources I’ve been looking I’ve listed below. While it is very difficult, I do think it is possible to create a web page that is resolution independent.
Get Off My Lawn!
Someone sent me a link to this web comic today and it made me laugh because I have been involved with the internet or BBSes since I was about 14 years old. The thing is though I don’t agree with the final premise because, for all its faults I love the internet we have today for the most part.
What do I miss from the older stuff? Because I like lists here is one of what we have today:
- Easier to use
- Prettier
- Faster
- The possibility of services like Netflix, iTunes, rdio, and their ilk
What I don’t like
- More Noise
- Flash
- More malware
- Pop under ads
I am sure I could come up with a more comprehensive list of both but I think what really matters to me is that I see the Internet as it has always been a growing, exciting place that opens up a lot of possibility. This is the internet I grew up with and hope to see continue. That is why issues like Net Neutrality are so important. It’s also why groups like the EFF, whom I don’t always agree with, are also so important. So I hope everyone will support both to keep the internet what it is about – possibility.
Reading
