Pinderkent

Early last month I gave my opinion about some OpenOffice.org UI prototypes. In short, I wasn't too impressed. Unfortunately, we now see similarly flawed ideas coming out of the Mozilla Firefox camp with their "Windows Theme Revamp" project.

Take, for instance, this proposed design for the Firefox 4.0 UI. I do realize that it's a very early proposal, and will likely be subject to much change. However, it looks to me like it's heading in a very bad direction from the very start.

My main complain is the complete lack of consistency we're seeing. Functionality that was previous organized in a sensible and accessible manner within menus and toolbars is now spread out haphazardly throughout the top of the window. We have buttons to the left of the browser tabs, along with some to the right. Within the buttons to the right of the browser tabs, one button looks like a browser tab, while the other doesn't. We have various kinds of buttons around the URL bar, and some within the URL bar itself. Then there are what seem to be "Page" and "Tools" dropdown menus at the right-hand side. While likely similar in functionality, these dropdowns and buttons just aren't graphically consistent with one another.

Something that recent UI designers seem to forget these days is the benefit of textual labels. Traditional menus often do a good job of using text to explain the different actions that are available. These days, however, we get icons that probably were descriptive to the designer, but don't mean a damn thing to many of the users stuck using their design. At a glance, I have no idea what clicking on the hat-shaped thing next to the "+" tab in the tab bar would do.

Another uncertain aspect of the design is what clicking on the button to the left of the "Page" dropdown would do, the one with the picture of a book containing a star. I assume it involves bookmarks, but would that bookmark the current page, or would it just expand the dropdown? That isn't clear from just looking at the button. It also isn't clear what the relationship is between that button and the star within the URL bar is. Contrast this to the "Bookmarks" menu of Firefox 3.0, which by its label clearly indicates that it involves bookmarks, and has a very clear "Bookmark This Page" item at the very top.

I'm not sure what drives these UI designers to create these completely inconsistent and unfriendly user interfaces. It's almost as though they're trying too hard. They're making changes and breaking with tradition not to truly improve the user experience, but rather just to be "different". And that's not the way to go. It's good to be different when those differences bring some benefit. Unfortunately, we just don't see that with the differences proposed in the recent OpenOffice.org and Firefox 4.0 design proposals. As a user of both pieces of software, I hope that these design proposals don't become reality. They'd seriously hinder the usability of those applications.

Guido van Rossum, of Python fame, recently twittered about how using CSS instead of tables for Web page layout just isn't worth it. This was submitted to Reddit, and the discussion it generated there is somewhat predictable. Many of the comments get into the typical arguments surrounding the topics of HTML tables versus CSS for layout, and the necessity of separating content from presentation. But I think most of the comments that are currently there miss some key issues.

First of all, a number of the posters point out that once you learn the many quirks and incompatibilities of the various popular Web browsers, CSS-based layout becomes quite natural. To a great extent, this is true. There are many Web designers out there who can make very good looking sites using CSS. Unfortunately, it takes literally years of effort, learning, experimentation and failure to get to this point. And with browser technology continually evolving, it takes further effort just to keep pace.

Now, some people will argue that any inherently complex task will take much time and effort to master, and they're correct. But in this case, CSS-based layout shouldn't be such a task. Reality, however, shows that it is, mainly due to artificial difficulties created by low-quality, inconsistent and obsolete-yet-widely-used Web browsers.

Another thing to consider is that not everybody wants to make complex Web layouts. Many people who aren't Web designers want to quickly throw together a site that has a relatively simple layout, and looks decent. On one hand, they can battle with the many troubles that CSS brings to inexperienced users. On the other, they can just use HTML tables, which for many simple layout tasks end up being much more practical and efficient to work with.

CSS should be able to cater to people in both camps, namely those professionals who want to develop complex pages with a high degree of control, and those who just want to throw together a page quickly and easily. Unfortunately, it fails both groups of people a lot of the time. The trend seems to be that most professional designers struggle with it until they finally learn how to wrangle it, most of the time. By that point they've invested so much time and effort that the only way they can obtain some degree of payback is to employ their hard-earned "knowledge", which itself is more an understanding of numerous broken and poorly-implemented Web browsers than anything else. And those people who deem their time better spent on other tasks, like Guido, apparently, just resort to HTML tables.

The fact that the CSS versus HTML tables debate has raged for so long should suggest that CSS is a dead end. It doesn't do a sufficient job in fixing the huge variety of problems associated with what should otherwise be a straightforward task. Perhaps Internet Explorer 8's better support for the CSS table model will help improve the situation. Then again, it may just make things worse. Perhaps the only solution is to throw out the sub par technologies that we employ now, and find a better way to solve the problems of Webpage layout.

Recently, Adrian Bateman of Microsoft raised some questions, concerns and thoughts about HTML 5. Although Microsoft doesn't have the best reputation for supporting and complying with standards, especially when it comes to Web technologies, we shouldn't use those feelings as an excuse to ignore these questions. Had some other non-Microsoft individual or organization made these same remarks, they'd be just as valid and just as worthy of some serious consideration.

A number of questions are raised about the necessity of a number of the new elements. Indeed, many of the new section elements of HTML 5 do seem quite unnecessary. The use of <div> or <span> tags with an associated class should be more than sufficient replacements.

The same goes for the proposed <dialog> element, which is meant for representing a back-and-forth conversation between parties. Aside from the lack of necessity for this element, I personally don't like its name very much. Within the field of software development, the term "dialog" is often used to refer to dialog boxes, which is the first thing that comes to my mind when I see that tag. However, dialog boxes and the <dialog> tag are clearly two very different concepts.

With respect to some of the new tags relating to time and date handling, I have to agree with Adrian's description of such handling as "notoriously complex". Earlier this year I wrote about how care is needed when implementing time and date handling. But now HTML 5 seems to be opening this can of worms with its new <time> tag, and its <input> tag changes. I hope these new elements don't just introduce more problems than they solve.

The <bb> element sounds quite questionable. Aside from the completely non-descriptive tag name, the security implications of this element are obvious. Thankfully, both Microsoft and Mozilla seem aware of the potential dangers of this element.

The <progress> and <meter> elements theoretically sound useful, but I suspect that in reality, they just wouldn't be flexible enough for most Web developers. If their appearance couldn't be heavily modified, they'd likely just be passed over in favor of existing image-based approaches.

HTML 5 has always felt like a hodge-podge of different ideas from various groups, thrown together and called a "standard". It's good to see some realistic, solid criticism from one of the major Web browser developers. Hopefully their input will help HTML 5 resolve some of these issues surrounding unnecessary, impractical and potentially dangerous elements and changes.

I just finished reading Marcus Cavanaugh's recent The Cross-Platform Myth article. The first two-thirds or so of it are quite correct. He points out that when an application is developed for two or more desktop environments that differ in some pretty fundamental ways, like Windows and Mac OS X, the result usually isn't too great. The app likely won't fit in well on one or more of the platforms, which can lead to usability problems, and may even result in users not adopting the software.

At the very end of the article, however, he writes the following:

The only acceptable cross-platform UI toolkit lives in your web browser. If you want your application to work on both Windows and OS X, create a web application. In the browser, you can freely design a custom user interface that won't seem out of place on any operating system. Users understand that web sites operate under different rules.

I find this reasoning quite absurd. First of all, Web browsers are some of the worst-conforming desktop applications around. Early in the article, he even mentions Mozilla Firefox as an example of a cross-platform application that just doesn't fit in anywhere. But Firefox isn't the only browser guilty of this. The Windows port of Apple's Safari Web browser clearly doesn't behave like a typical Windows app, either. And to some extent, the same even goes for Opera.

So not only are Web browsers themselves perfect examples of UIs that target the lowest common denominator, but the environment that they present is that very same philosophy taken to the extreme. The only consistency is that there's inconsistency. The built-in UI controls or widgets are extremely limited. And everyone who has even had to do a minor amount of Web development knows that the environment differs significantly between the different browsers.

When it comes to Web applications, it's not that they "won't seem out of place on any operating system." Rather, it's that they won't fit in with any existing desktop environment. In a sense, Web applications are typically so horrible in that respect that most users can't even recognize how bad these applications are. For some odd reason, users tend to use confusing, inconsistent or poor-quality Web applications far longer than they would the desktop equivalents.

The situation likely won't improve. Like Marcus mentions in a footnote in his article, RIAs only make the bad situation even worse. They allow for further inconsistency in an already inconsistent environment. And the other "innovations" we are seeing are just poor attempts to bring existing desktop application concepts within the browser. The canvas element and O3D are good examples of this. They both pale in comparison even to the cross-platform, desktop-equivalent abstractions of libraries and APIs like wxWidgets, GTK+ and OpenGL.

In fact, the Web development community has even gone so far as to try and abstract away the variety of programming languages we have available with a typical desktop environment. We are stuck using JavaScript, which ends up bringing us the worst of all worlds, like the Web application development environment itself.

All in all, those of us who have developed real desktop applications for years and year end up being quite disappointed with what Web development offers, or more correctly, all that it doesn't offer. We've thrown out everything we learned during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, only to replace it with half-baked, browser-based "alternatives" over the past decade. We've essentially taken a huge step backwards, amplifying the very problems that Marcus spoke out against during the first part of his article.

Today I read an article that discussed a variety of issues relating to Microsoft Windows today, including the general disappointment surrounding Windows Vista, and the apparent lack of interest in Windows 7, especially in the enterprise. It goes on to suggest that Microsoft themselves are responsible for this, and Apple will gain the most from this situation.

I don't think we're really seeing Microsoft tarnishing the Windows brand. In some sense, it's not even possible for them to do that. Many people, and not just Mac users, have an extremely low opinion of Windows to begin with, along with many of Microsoft's other software products. Although the NT-based systems typically don't suffer as badly from the chronic crashes and security flaws that plagued Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME, users of those earlier versions will forever associate the names "Microsoft" and "Windows" with poor-quality software. Even today, I rarely meet people who outright like Windows. Most of its users just seem to tolerate it.

If anything is causing Windows to become more irrelevant, it's the widespread move towards Web-based applications. This isn't a novel observation, by any means. It has been obvious for some time now that many applications that were formerly desktop apps have been replaced by Web-based alternatives for a large number of people. People using Web-based email services like Microsoft's own Windows Live Hotmail and GMail instead of desktop mail clients is one significant example.

The move towards Web-based applications is a trend that has been common within enterprise software development for years now. More and more companies are replacing what were traditionally desktop applications with Web-based alternatives. Now this often isn't a good idea; there are some applications that are much better left as standalone apps. But in many domains, the software the users are interacting with is solely browser-based, and thus the underlying desktop operating system is essentially irrelevant.

When the user is interacting mainly with a Web browser, it really doesn't matter what operating system is underlying it. Mozilla Firefox and Opera alone are typically good enough for using most Web-based apps. So the need for Microsoft's software is diminished. This is why GNU/Linux has become more appealing for many enterprise users. It's not about GNU/Linux being more capable than Windows, but rather the opposite; it's easier and cheaper to strip GNU/Linux down to provide just the bare essentials for running the browser used to access the Web applications.

Microsoft saw the threat that Web-based apps posed to desktop applications, and put forth their Windows Live and Office Live initiatives. I'm not sure if these have been as successful as Microsoft would have hoped. In my experience, I've seen little to no serious adoption of these technologies in enterprise settings. This is one area where Web-based applications typically aren't as useful or acceptable. Many enterprise users want greater control over their documents, namely where they are stored and who can access them.

I think it's doubtful that Apple will truly make significant inroads into the enterprise. While some such users will likely switch to Apple's hardware and software, and others will no doubt consider it, given the current cost of Apple's offerings I don't see it happening on a wide scale. Much enterprise computing has been driven by large purchases of lower-quality and very low-cost PCs. As mentioned before, with many organizations moving towards Web-based applications, the need for overly powerful PCs is diminished. With low-end PCs still being suitable, many IT managers will need to cut costs by using GNU/Linux instead of Windows, rather than purchasing more expensive hardware/software combinations from Apple.

So we're likely looking at a more diversified computing world, with some users using desktop apps, others mainly using Web-based apps, and many using a mix of both. It's very unlikely that we'll see Apple's products, or any other company's products, achieve the same market share that Windows holds. There's just too much impetus at this time for such significant changes, even if future versions of Windows are as poor as Windows Vista was.