Download Squad

Elephantware. That is what we are talking about. Bloated programs that make brand new PCs boot like Pentium 2s with 64 MBs of RAM.

This is software that causes your screen to freeze while it works, consumes enough system resources to display a reminder box letting you know there is a new, even bigger, version available for download. Software we've been forced to install so we can read some special document format, enjoy some DRM infected piece of media, or communicate with others who also live with the same brand of behemoth riding on their backs.

We all have it. We are all stuck with it. And, aside from a glimmer or two of hope, we can't expect to escape their boot screens, quick launch icons, or update reminders anytime soon.

This is the worst of the worst.

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Application are moving online at a frighteningly speed. People are increasingly using their computers as little more than internet terminals and media players. All of this innovation has happened, in part, because HTML and the browser marketplace has been relatively stable (even FireFox's original goal was to work like IE - only better). All that said, we've started to push Javascript, CSS, and HTML about as far as they can go.

Let's face it, HTML 4 is old. Really old. No doubt older than your PC. Older than your iPod (older than the very first iPod). It was built and designed solely for document rendering in the days before NetFlix added ratings to their website and Google started mapping. Now we have spreadsheets, word processors, work flow engines, games, and outlook style email clients running within the web browser. All on HTML 4. All with multiple hacks to make the code run correctly in as many browsers as possible. All with inherent security vulnerabilities . Isn't it time for a new version of HTML?

Douglas Crockford thinks so. The man behind JSON, JSLINT, and Manic Mansion (of all things) has a lot to say on the subject and offers so very timely and useful suggestions on what the next version should look like.

Here is the a quick summary of his wish list and an explanation of why Google (of all people) may make fixing HTML impossible.:

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No, we aren't talking about Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We're talking about the Shredder chess engine. This AI likes to play chess, and it also likes to win.

Let's face it, most game AI work these days is not about making harder opponents, it is about making flawed opponents that play like humans. "Indistinguishable", if you will. But, as Shredder makes clear, it is easy for the computers to beat humans. That is why the computers should fight each other.

The Shredder engine is actually built to play against other computer chess engines. It does its job well and has won 12 World Computer Chess Champion titles since 1996. For this online version the AI has been dumbed down to make for a more interesting human vs computer challenge. It is still dirt hard though and you'll have to have some serious chess skills to get more than 10 moves into most games without being checkmated.

Look out PayDay loan proprietors!

The web has often been used to make a point (The Onion anyone?). But rarely has it been used as effectively as with the Predatory Lending Association.

This site has it all: Loan calculators, discussion boards, racial profiling tools, and a Google maps based "poor finder" that makes suggestions for where you should open up your next PayDay loan store. The site is extremely sarcastic and attempts to illustrate the cold, calculating, and corrupt business practices of predatory lenders, many of which exist simply to let people with lower incomes hock their next pay check and take the money to the Casino.

For those who aren't in the USA, PayDay loan stores offer short term loans with enormous fees based on your previous pay stub. They let you get your check early, but they'll charge you 10-30% to do it.

The site encourages people to sign up for their mailing list so they can notify you of future projects and whether or not PayDay lenders attempt to hack the site and take it down.

Virtual Hosting has an excellent article up detailing 23 actionable web design lessons that we can learn from eye-tracking studies. Most of the items are common sense: people scan web pages rather than read them, people look at the top left corner of the page first, people ignore banner ads, people ignore fancy formating that looks like ads, etc. But why do people interact with pages in this manner?

The answer should be obvious: web designers have trained visitors to use their sites in a certain way. Yahoo, Google, AOL, and MSN all format their sites according to the above listed guidelines. Because of this, people expect site names and logos to be a the top left. They expect banner shaped images to be banners and therefore ignorable. They expect sites to look, feel, and function a certain way and they are very frustrated when they don't.

In a way it is like news papers. People expect news papers to look and function a certain way no matter what city or country they are in. Its perpetually reinforcing as each site that follows this standard pattern (which is not a bad pattern by any means) causes more users to expect the next site they visit to look the same. It is good because it promotes usability but bad because it limits creativity and new design patterns. People have to innovative inside a very small box.