Silverback, a new OS X application from the renowned UK-based design team Clearleft, was a mystery for quite a while. The app had a site with some neat visual tricks and a gorilla with a clipboard, and it said the application was for designers, but what did it do? The suspense was killing us! We finally had a chance to test Silverback this week, and if you design websites or application interfaces, this program is worth the wait.
Silverback basically turns your Mac into a full-featured usability testing station. Add a new project, add some users, and have them come sit down and test out your interface. Silverback hangs out unobtrusively in the background, capturing video of the the entire screen, including a cute (and useful) effect that marks where your tester is clicking. This in itself would be handy, but Silverback also takes advantage of your built-in iSight camera to include a picture-in-picture of the tester's reactions, on top of the screen capture.
This way, you can see everything the user is doing in real time, and they can speak comments aloud as they come up, rather than pausing to write them down. Usability testing the old-fashioned way generally involves expensive setups and lots of instructions, but Silverback is intuitive to use and provides straightforward and informative results. Silverback is currently in private beta, so some testers can test its testing functions (this makes our heads hurt a little bit.)
It seems like every week there's a new application hitting the streets that aims to turn your Windows Mobile device into an iPhone. If you really want an iPhone, you should probably just buy one. On the other hand, if you prefer Windows Mobile applications, but like the look of the iPhone program launcher, we can understand why applications like Pointui are attractive.
Pointui appears to be scheduled for a Jan 1, 2008 launch. There's not much info available on the application's home page yet, but there are a series of Flickr photos and the YouTube video you see above. Pointui replaces the Windows Mobile start page with a new home page that lets you launch applications by sliding from one to the next. The settings menus are also replaced by large easy to see buttons.
It's not clear that Pointui will make it easier to use a Windows Mobile device. In fact, it appears that in some situations it could take longer to find and launch applications than it would take using the default interface. But it's nice to have choices. One of the advantages of Windows Mobile for now is that the SDK is available, meaning there are tons of third party applications that let you customize your user experience. The iPhone SDK doesn't come out until early next year, and somehow we doubt the first thing developers will do is try to emulate the Windows Mobile experience on the iPhone.
Windows keeps the Start button, taskbar and system tray at the bottom of the display and a menubar in every window. Mac OS X keeps one main menubar at the top of the display, with a 'dock' of larger icons that take the place of the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the display. Linux, for the most part, seems to prefer the Windows UI, typically using a taskbar-like system with menubars again in every window, but through the power of Open Source, you can do just about anything you want to the Linux UI to make it feel more like home. Some people find one approach more useful, while others prefer a different side of the fence. While the debate surrounding one's OS preference isn't showing any signs of subsiding, we thought it might be useful to offer at least a little insight and theory into why some fundamentals of Mac OS X are designed so differently.
One of the basic principles that informs the Mac OS X menubar is something called Fitts' Law, which I first learned about from John Gruber of Daring Fireball in a post here. To keep things brief, however, I'll just quote a short introduction from the Wikipedia:
In ergonomics, Fitts' law is a model of human movement, predicting the time required to rapidly move from a starting position to a final target area, as a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. Fitts' law is used to model the act of pointing, both in the real world, for example, with a hand or finger and on computers, for example, with a mouse.
To summarize: Fitts' Law is about how far you have to travel to hit a target, and how easy that target is to hit. Apple implemented these concepts (and I'm sure plenty of others) when designing their menubar by pinning it to the very top of the display, not only from a hierarchal standpoint (you can always look to the very top left of your display to find out exactly which app you're in), but also from a 'make it easy as possible to hit this' perspective. You can simply fling your mouse 'up' and you're at the menubar; even if you click on the very top-most pixel above File, Edit or Help, you'll still hit that menu item and activate it. It's a seemingly minor detail, but one that can help quite a bit during one's daily computing.
This concept is also present in other major OS interfaces, such as the Windows Start button; fling your mouse 'down and left', click and you'll hit the One Button to Rule Them All. Mac OS X's Apple and Spotlight menus also function the same way: fling your mouse 'up and to the left', click in the furthest pixel up there and you'll activate the Apple menu; 'up and to the right', and you're in Spotlight.
If anything, the main point we want to get across is that there is typically a lot of theory that goes into the design of an OS and how users interact with it. We might not always agree with the approach taken by one camp or another, but at least people are thinking about this stuff, because even in 2007, computers still aren't that intuitive to some users who have yet to hop on board the digital train. The more thought, consistency and intuitiveness OS engineers design into our software, the easier it will be for everyone to come along for the ride, no matter what side of the car they're sitting on.
One of the complaints I hear a lot about Office 2007 is how inextensible the Ribbon is. The truth is that you can customize it, granted it takes a bit of knowledge and the right software tools to make changes to it. This involves a bit of programming in a language much like (and based on) XML called RibbonX. RibbonCustomizer aims to help you change it up without a lot of programming. There is a free starter version and a professional version for purchase ($29.99) that you can download. You'll get a 14 day free trial of the pro edition to see if it ruffles your feathers. The link provided has a feature comparison for both the free and paid versions if you want to know what the difference is between the two.
Has anyone noticed that the Ribbon in Office 2007 does not extend to all Office programs? Publisher doesn't have it, as well as some other programs. It seems that Microsoft only saw fit to include in the most loved and used applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. I can't help but brace for the fallout from users. First Microsoft tries to build a "zero-learning-curve" model into their new office suite, hoping that users will find it easier to use and eliminate much of the complexity of the system, which is quite noble, then they don't include it in all the suite's applications? I don't see such a unified front and integrated user experience this time around that Microsoft is always so long-winded about. So this was motivated not by customers' needs or the need for one interface, but by rising costs, looming deadlines, and putting out fires during development? In my x-ray vision, I see far into the future and can't help but wonder if this will help Google (and others) spell doom for at least a good sized portion of Microsoft's cash-cow business? There is already a ton of speculation that Vista will be the last operating system to be released by Microsoft (as far as we know the traditional OS) because the web is now becoming more important than ever. I am hearing that Google's online apps will also spell disaster for Microsoft, perhaps in the next decade or so. Do I agree? Well, the jury is still cherry-picking their favorites, so to speak. I have used Google's apps extensively, including docs and spreadsheets, and I must say that I would rather use Google to get the job done and never have to mess with Office, and I am a long time Office lover. If Microsoft wasn't the standard for everything it wouldn't be hard to find other avenues that suit me just fine (as I have found already). Is the selectively programmed ribbon this important, and will it start the downward climb for our dearly beloved Microsoft? It isn't that deep and probably won't matter to most people. We will either adapt to the multi-mode confusion, use something else, or get over it, but my point is that Microsoft increasingly lets quality and the integrity of their offerings go by the wayside. In addition, I think Microsoft must get on the web-based band-wagon before they are run over by online suites of prey. Desktop office software is a dying breed, as you can tell by looking at the marketplace and the fast-moving mass adoption of many online suites now used in addition to or in place of Office. Microsoft needs to crack the whip and get into the game while there is still time. It has been quite shocking to watch them slowly lose their stranglehold. It is a whole new world today.
So you're a software developer and want your program to have a shiny "ribbon" interface just like Office 2007? Well, guess what--Microsoft patented the hell out of it! This should not surprise anybody. However, there is good news for developers, or some of them, at least. Microsoft has announced that it has "created a royalty-free licensing program that will enable developers to build applications that have the look and feel of the new 2007 Office system applications." The license is perpetual, meaning once Microsoft grants you the license it can't turn around and revoke or change it later on. However there are, as you might imagine, some "guidelines" Microsoft wants you to follow when building your own ribbony apps, and they take the form of a 120-page document. Though the deal sounds largely positive for software developers, there is one significant catch: Microsoft won't license their ribbon UI patents for products that compete directly with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access. This is a sensible move for Microsoft, but a bummer for the makers of competing products who stand a lot to gain from making products that look and act just like the dominant office suite in the marketplace.
You can check out the press release and a canned interview about the new licensing program at the link above, but I heartily recommend you skip it and instead head over to Jensen Harris' blog. Harris is Microsoft's Group Program Manager for the Office UI and lays everything out in plain English. He also links to a preview of the guidelines (you have to sign an NDA to get at the full 120-page document) and a Channel 9 video in which he talks to Microsoft laywer Judy Jennison about the program.
Users can now set their own launch page, with the ability to chose between their Home page, All Items or any folder/tag. Completely hiding the left column that houses navigation and the folder list is also possible with a mere keyboard shortcut, as is auto-refreshing of feeds with a dedicated button and web 2.0-certified UI feedback when folders and feeds update. Last but not least is the return of the space bar; it now scrolls through long articles and selects the next headline in the list (and yes, shift-space rolls backwards).
Check out the announcement post for more details, or dive in if you haven't tried the new Google Reader yet.
Here is an interesting site that is very different in terms of its user interface. The weird thing is that the site itself does not want you to click on it (after the first time). The entire interface is created in flash and simply lets the mouse-over do all the walking. While I don't think it will catch on in a big way, in is clever, well-done, and like a prototype car, is a good proof of concept. It is hard to not click the site, since everything we do online is based on clicks, but it is possible. I almost don't mind the dontclick.it interface, but it must be an incredibly time-consuming way to build a web interface, and it makes you feel as though you don't have quite so much control over what happens on the page, which is a bit disconcerting. I would tell you to go check it out, but then you would have to click on the link, so that defeats the whole purpose. Oh well.
Google has announced what is quite possibly the largest update to Google Reader since its inception, bringing an entirely new UI, more keyboard shortcuts, new bookmarklets and a whole lotta results from user feedback to the table. Overall, as a Google Reader fan for some time, I am pleasantly surprised by this wholly positive and usable update, but it isn't without a few confusing quirks.
The first and most noticeable update is the radical change to Google Reader's UI, bringing it more in line with the tried and tested UI of many other online readers, but still with much of the Google engineers' unique genius baked in everywhere. Above you can see Reader has adopted the typical folder/grouping system on the left, while headlines can be listed on the right.
The Windows Client team, the division of Microsoft responsible for the user interface in Windows Vista (and previous versions), has finally jumped on the bandwagon and started a blog: Shell: Revealed. The new blog is a place for Microsoft's UI developers to talk about the changes in Vista and communicate with developers and enthusiasts. So far the blog hasn't revealed anything especially stunning, but it does relate the quasi-interesting story of What Happened to List View. They're still getting the hang of this whole blogging thing, but for the Vista-obsessed it's a great addition to the ol' feed reader. (Also, I really dig the little egg logo.)
Mozilla has decided to bring in some extra hands on a UI upgrade for FIrefox 2.0, still slated for an October release. Toronto software company Radiant Core beat out two others for the project which will focus on updating four specific areas of the browser: the search bar, icons, the tab strip and dialog buttons.
The present FIrefox 2.0 beta does not include any work from Radiant Core - you'll have to wait until the second beta, on schedule for an early September release, to see what they're bringing to the table.
Hopefully, Radiant Core can help make Firefox look more native to the various OSes it runs on; as a Mac user, Firefox definitely doesn't feel like it's from our side of the playground. It's good to see Mozilla taking a special interest in this area, and we're anxiously awaiting to see what progress the second beta brings.
del.icio.us is at it again, and this time they've added site thumbnails to the popular links on the homepage. Unfortunately, this is the only place thumbnails exist, but it's at least a step towards catching up to some of their competitors in this particular department.
Also making (another) appearance on the homepage is the re-introduction of popular tags, along with (from what I remember) some minor new UI elements as well. Bookmark counts are now in a more striking blue box, and I just noticed the tag cloud now uses red to denote tags that you share with everyone else (is this new or not?). Finally, on their blog they also hint at "lots of plans" for the recently updated del.icio.us API, but they offer nothing as hints towards whether it'll be a kitchen sink or a bookmarking A.I. that 'marks things for me based on my mood and past bookmarks. I guess we'll just have to wait (im)patiently.
37Signals' Basecamp is pretty slick, wouldn't you agree? Tablet PCs, in their own right, have quite the slick factor as well. Wouldn't it be cool if someone, say a small software company called Luckymonk, came up with the idea of combining the two, say with a product called Scout? It sure would!
While Scout isn't quite ready yet, Luckymonk offers a preview screencast of everything that will be possible once it's released. As an added bonus, the company will be releasing their Basecamp API wrapper for .NET 2.0 as well. For now, however, you Tablet PC owners will just have to bookmark Luckymonk's Scout product page under 'ToDo'.
I remember being excited at the AJAX enhancements to WordPress's admin back end with the last major 2.0 update, but what about the front end theme and UI? Unless you either do some digging and find an AJAX'ed theme or build one yourself, your WordPress blog will look just as boring as everyone else's. Right?
Wrong: AjaxWp brings some UI sexiness to your WordPress blog. Basically, through minimal configuration, this WordPress plugin brings that no-page-refresh effect to your entire blog. There are actually two basic configuration options, 'quick' and 'optimized', and the author has posted extensive instructions for both. Optimized, as you might expect, is a more efficient method and offers a smaller footprint, but requires a bit more PHP ninja work, so chose wisely, young padawan.
AjaxWp is offered from Gianni Milanesi's blog, and as you might expect, it's used on the blog itself so you can see it in action before you start digging into your own site.
Apple gets a lot of accolades for its user interface design, and even Microsoft is turning some heads with Vista and Office 2007, but they should both be paying attention to the OS Eric Patterson made. Unfortunately for us, Eric Patterson's OS isn't real: It's just a mock-up of what he thinks Mac OS 10.5 Leopard should look like, and it's cool enough to have won Phill Ryu's Fake Leopard Screenshot Contest. Ryu challenged would-be interface designers to envision the future of Mac OS X, and the results are truly stunning. Patterson's improvements are attractive, refined, and downright cool, and the other winners and runners-up are much the same. These people should be working for Apple--I want this stuff now!
Silverback, a new OS X application from the renowned UK-based design team Clearleft, was a mystery for quite a while. The app had a site with some neat visual tricks and a gorilla with a clipboard, and it said the application was for designers, but what did it do? The suspense was killing us! We finally had a chance to test Silverback this week, and if you design websites or application interfaces, this program is worth the wait.
