If you put something in a web browser window, expect people to expect it to behave like a web page.
I think people have been used to the concept of a browser behaving differently depending on context ever since ie4. There are probably people who don't even realize file system browsers didn't always look like a web browser.
The only way you're going to be able to control those expectations is by giving them something that is not in a web browser window.
If someone is using an application, I expect them to be using the application. People don't expect a spreadsheet to have a back button. "File/Close" would probably be the most common logical expectation of the function of a back button for an online app; but depending on the app, that won't always make sense.
An application is not a web page. Saying everything that uses a browser for a front end should act like a web page is naive. Different principles apply to applications. The application should be geared towards productivity, not expectations which may be outdated or inappropriate within context.
The Web has never limited itself to Tim Berner-Lee's original concept, nor do I think it should.
There is too little obvious difference for the user between a static web page, a page with a little dynamic content and a "web application" for fundamental concepts like the back button to behave differently.
OK, so what should the back button do for an online spreadsheet or word processor?
What's a good obvious use for a back button on a patient claim history information lookup app at a doctor's office?
Ever tried hitting the back button after posting a comment here on Slashdot? Does it do what you'd like it to do?
What do you mean "at one point"? The article he is spoofing is his OWN article about frames, and the advice STILL holds. How many sites do you see using frames out there? From my experience, almost none (I only say almost because I know there are but I haven't come accross anything other than the occasional garish personal geocities homepage which actually uses frames).
Ajax != Frames Comparing the two is just silly. It's just as silly as comparing frames to PHP or VBScript.
I did note the "This is a spoof" link at the bottom. I can only wonder what point the author was trying to make. While all those things are true of frames, I kept saying to myself "This is bullshit" while reading it in reference to Ajax.
For example, the gripe about printing is not valid at all. If you write the page(*) using web standards, you should have a custom printable version anyway. CSS makes that relatively easy. The difficulty involved has no relation to whether or not you used Ajax. Anyone who doesn't know how to make a custom print page has no credibility in expressing public views on web usability.
As for the back button breaking, I think most people expect the back button to be broken. It's pretty broken period. Additionally, it makes little or no sense in the context of a web app - which is where Ajax fits in.
(*I say "page", but perhaps "output target" would be more to the point.)
Anyone else find it ironic that the page has ads for Microsoft "secure" network tools and trojan blocking? There was one when I first vied the page. I did a reload and it showed a different one on the same theme.
If you disagree with it, just edit it! No need to get all indignant.
Yeah, really... I keep adding a section on him being a poo-poo-head and then someone edits it to look like this:
On November 29, 2005, Seigenthaler wrote an op-ed in USA Today discussing his biography on Wikipedia. Between May and September of that year, the article contained incorrect statements, including allegations that he considered be "character assassination." The statements, which had been inserted anonymously, had been removed by the time he wrote the article. After examining legal routes for redress, Seigenthaler concluded that "...we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research -- but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them."
It should be noted that this is not the first time he has complained of character assassination. On May 13, 1976, he filed a complaint with the Justice Department about the FBI and furthermore agreed to give congressional testimony critical of the Bureau.
You can't teach digital image editing in the abstract any more than you can teach painting without ever picking up a brush
But you can. There are basic artistic concepts (Golden mean, rule of thirds, composition, balance, color theory, etc.) that apply just as well to charcoal, pencil, crayons, and finger paints. For that matter, they apply to photography. More specifically, there are basic techniques that apply no matter what image editor you are using.
What you can't do is a step-by-step guide covering every different way to achieve the same thing with different tools. You couldn't even cover all the different ways to do it with the same tool.
A book like the submitter suggested would be a valuable resource for learning what tools are available and why you would use them. Then you could refer to the manual to figure out how to do it with your particular tool. Being a Gimp user, that's basically what I do anyway.
Re:Comment every conditional branch or loop
on
How to Write Comments
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· Score: 4, Funny
// say file not found instead of invalid due to reason blah blah blah...
"blah blah blah" is mostly what I use for comments also:)
Re:Can AJAX finally bring us "push technology"
on
Ajax in Action
·
· Score: 1
AJAX applications that load data do it by polling, exactly the same as meta refresh tags and timer-based javascript refreshes have been for 10 years.
Polling... yes. Exactly the same way... no.
Ajax is not the end all of programming technologies, it is, however, very useful. I'm completing a rewrite of an internal project for work using xajax. The user interface is so much better than before it's amazing. It has allowed me to add the little usability pieces that just aren't possible with traditional methods. For example, dynamically generated drop downs based on live user input similar to the "To:" field on gmail.
Yes, it could have been done without Ajax, and in fact it was. However, the look, the feel, and the ease of use for the end user has improved dramatically.
So, suddenly because someone send a researcher to the rain forest, to learn how indigenous people used some plants, they suddenly have exclusives right to the product of those plants
The flip side of that is the indigenous people made no effort to help anyone else with their knowledge. It took someone else a lot of effort to go find that knowledge and bring it to people who need it. They also likely did not recognise it for what it was.
Medicine is something that takes a lot of up front investment, a lot of research, and lot of testing, and a lot of time to bring to market. It's something for which patents are a good thing. If medical companies don't have the incentive of having a time limited monopoly to recoup their investments, they have much less reason to put out that money up front - and therefore there is less medicine available to everyone.
Medicine and manufacturing != software. Not all patents are bad. They are actually good when they encourage companies to invest research money on things they otherwise may not have.
On a slightly offtopic rant I'm rather sick of populated areas (typically blue states in the US) subsidizing rural ones (typically red states in the US). Why should we have to pay more for our phone service/electricity/roads/etc, etc, etc just so you can afford yours? If you like living in the middle of nowhere so much then be prepared to pay for it.
Well, there's another way to go about it. You can pay more for your groceries so the farmer can afford his utilities. You can pay more for your energy so the powerplant worker can afford a phone. And so forth; you get the idea.
I actually think you should pay the full cost of importing food, energy, etc to your blue cities. And I think the rural dwellers should bear the full cost of their services. Unlike many people in blue cities (the states are pretty much all red, dotted with some blue cities) I don't think taxing and redistributing wealth through government mandate is the proper way to handle things. The problems with redistributing wealth is that no one ever thinks it's fair, government gets bigger and more powerful, it opens the door to corruption and misuse, and it never works the way it was intended.
Back in 1985 there was a BBS package for the Commodore 64 called 6485 (creative name, huh?). The source code had control characters embedded within that would cause part of the listing to be erased when listed to the screen in the standard C=64 editor. If you tried to edit one of those lines, you'd lose code. It worked with source code instead of object code, but tamper resistant code is certainly not a new idea.
No, it's not communism. Communism is a top down approach to control where a central authority dictates what everyone does. Communism isn't about happy people working together for a better tomorrow, despite what you might have been taught.
Your last statement about no one controlling the internet is actually anarchy... which also is not what the internet is.
It's amazing that you could try to apply two diametrically opposed labels to the same thing... and then get modded up for it.
A balloon is not a 2D surface, it is a 3D object with lots of little atoms dancing around inside it. My whole point was that treating the universe like a 2D object is a flawed model. You -can- determine an absolute center of an expanding 3D object.
I have another thought experiment for you. Take an uninflated balloon and a marker and make little dots all over the balloon. Blow the balloon up and notice how the outside surface follows your copy machine example with all the dots moving away from each other. However, dots close to one another are moving away from each other more slowly than dots farther away.
The universe is not a 2D surface, you can't throw away the Z-axis.
Now, notice how the center of the balloon is still the center and roughly the same distance from every dot and all dots are moving away from the center at roughly the same speed (but away from each other at varying speeds). Also, you can't move any single dot to where the core of the balloon is without moving ALL the other dots in the SAME direction. You can use any dot as a reference, but none of them display the characteristics of "the center".
Why can't someone make paint that is easier to use. It looks so simple when skilled artists make paintings, but I have too many confusing options to choose from. I mean really... there are so many colors and I can't figure out how to hold the brush. Do I use the bristly end or the hard end? And what do I put the paint on? There are too many confusing options. Art supply stores should make this easier. There should only be one paint brush and one type of paint and one color that does the 45 things that most painters need to do.
Don't get me wrong, some art supply stores sell paint-by-numbers. But it really limits what I want to paint. I've tried changing the paint-by-numbers "Cat" into "Dog", but it never turns out right... the media is just too limited.
I want something that is powerful, flexible, and allows me to look like I know what I'm doing even though I don't. I don't want to learn to be an artist, I just want to push a button.... er... pick up a paint brush and create professional art. I don't want to have to learn about composition, paint mixing, or any other information that is vital to understanding art. The canvas should read my mind.
I'm curious how someone owned a computer in 1978 and never learned to program. There was little else you could do with them back then. Even in the mid 80's most people were still copying their programs out of magazines.
Looking out my office window out towards the MS River after reading this story gives me an idea. I should patent rivers. I mean really, if natural discoveries can be patened, why shouldn't I get in on it? It's not like Hernando Desoto bothered to patent it. And why stop at rivers? I could patent the water that flows in them.
Let's see Microsoft top that with a XML patent. A patent on water would be a huge bargaining chip, don't you think? Are you thirsty Bill?
This could be so profitable...
(running to the patent office before someone patents oxygen)
Slashdot Mirror
I think people have been used to the concept of a browser behaving differently depending on context ever since ie4. There are probably people who don't even realize file system browsers didn't always look like a web browser.
If someone is using an application, I expect them to be using the application. People don't expect a spreadsheet to have a back button. "File/Close" would probably be the most common logical expectation of the function of a back button for an online app; but depending on the app, that won't always make sense.
An application is not a web page. Saying everything that uses a browser for a front end should act like a web page is naive. Different principles apply to applications. The application should be geared towards productivity, not expectations which may be outdated or inappropriate within context.
The Web has never limited itself to Tim Berner-Lee's original concept, nor do I think it should.
OK, so what should the back button do for an online spreadsheet or word processor?
What's a good obvious use for a back button on a patient claim history information lookup app at a doctor's office?
Ever tried hitting the back button after posting a comment here on Slashdot? Does it do what you'd like it to do?
Ajax != Frames
Comparing the two is just silly. It's just as silly as comparing frames to PHP or VBScript.
I did note the "This is a spoof" link at the bottom. I can only wonder what point the author was trying to make. While all those things are true of frames, I kept saying to myself "This is bullshit" while reading it in reference to Ajax.
For example, the gripe about printing is not valid at all. If you write the page(*) using web standards, you should have a custom printable version anyway. CSS makes that relatively easy. The difficulty involved has no relation to whether or not you used Ajax. Anyone who doesn't know how to make a custom print page has no credibility in expressing public views on web usability.
As for the back button breaking, I think most people expect the back button to be broken. It's pretty broken period. Additionally, it makes little or no sense in the context of a web app - which is where Ajax fits in.
(*I say "page", but perhaps "output target" would be more to the point.)
Perhaps he meant animated GIFs.
Two words: uuencode uudecode
And a happy/sad/neutral winter/summer holiday/regular-day season/time-of-year to you/you-and-yours too/also.
Anyone else find it ironic that the page has ads for Microsoft "secure" network tools and trojan blocking? There was one when I first vied the page. I did a reload and it showed a different one on the same theme.
But you can. There are basic artistic concepts (Golden mean, rule of thirds, composition, balance, color theory, etc.) that apply just as well to charcoal, pencil, crayons, and finger paints. For that matter, they apply to photography. More specifically, there are basic techniques that apply no matter what image editor you are using.
What you can't do is a step-by-step guide covering every different way to achieve the same thing with different tools. You couldn't even cover all the different ways to do it with the same tool.
A book like the submitter suggested would be a valuable resource for learning what tools are available and why you would use them. Then you could refer to the manual to figure out how to do it with your particular tool. Being a Gimp user, that's basically what I do anyway.
Polling... yes.
Exactly the same way... no.
Ajax is not the end all of programming technologies, it is, however, very useful. I'm completing a rewrite of an internal project for work using xajax. The user interface is so much better than before it's amazing. It has allowed me to add the little usability pieces that just aren't possible with traditional methods. For example, dynamically generated drop downs based on live user input similar to the "To:" field on gmail.
Yes, it could have been done without Ajax, and in fact it was. However, the look, the feel, and the ease of use for the end user has improved dramatically.
The flip side of that is the indigenous people made no effort to help anyone else with their knowledge. It took someone else a lot of effort to go find that knowledge and bring it to people who need it. They also likely did not recognise it for what it was.
Medicine is something that takes a lot of up front investment, a lot of research, and lot of testing, and a lot of time to bring to market. It's something for which patents are a good thing. If medical companies don't have the incentive of having a time limited monopoly to recoup their investments, they have much less reason to put out that money up front - and therefore there is less medicine available to everyone.
Medicine and manufacturing != software. Not all patents are bad. They are actually good when they encourage companies to invest research money on things they otherwise may not have.
Well, there's another way to go about it. You can pay more for your groceries so the farmer can afford his utilities. You can pay more for your energy so the powerplant worker can afford a phone. And so forth; you get the idea.
I actually think you should pay the full cost of importing food, energy, etc to your blue cities. And I think the rural dwellers should bear the full cost of their services. Unlike many people in blue cities (the states are pretty much all red, dotted with some blue cities) I don't think taxing and redistributing wealth through government mandate is the proper way to handle things. The problems with redistributing wealth is that no one ever thinks it's fair, government gets bigger and more powerful, it opens the door to corruption and misuse, and it never works the way it was intended.
Hmmm...
Back in 1985 there was a BBS package for the Commodore 64 called 6485 (creative name, huh?). The source code had control characters embedded within that would cause part of the listing to be erased when listed to the screen in the standard C=64 editor. If you tried to edit one of those lines, you'd lose code. It worked with source code instead of object code, but tamper resistant code is certainly not a new idea.
I am for one...
I love Suse. It's my favorite distro by far.
No, it's not communism. Communism is a top down approach to control where a central authority dictates what everyone does. Communism isn't about happy people working together for a better tomorrow, despite what you might have been taught.
Your last statement about no one controlling the internet is actually anarchy... which also is not what the internet is.
It's amazing that you could try to apply two diametrically opposed labels to the same thing... and then get modded up for it.
That, I can whole heartedly agree with.
A balloon is not a 2D surface, it is a 3D object with lots of little atoms dancing around inside it. My whole point was that treating the universe like a 2D object is a flawed model. You -can- determine an absolute center of an expanding 3D object.
Interesting, but flawed.
I have another thought experiment for you. Take an uninflated balloon and a marker and make little dots all over the balloon. Blow the balloon up and notice how the outside surface follows your copy machine example with all the dots moving away from each other. However, dots close to one another are moving away from each other more slowly than dots farther away.
The universe is not a 2D surface, you can't throw away the Z-axis.
Now, notice how the center of the balloon is still the center and roughly the same distance from every dot and all dots are moving away from the center at roughly the same speed (but away from each other at varying speeds). Also, you can't move any single dot to where the core of the balloon is without moving ALL the other dots in the SAME direction. You can use any dot as a reference, but none of them display the characteristics of "the center".
Let's see who buries who...
(I wonder if someone is regretting a certain lawsuit and idle threats right about now)
Why can't someone make paint that is easier to use. It looks so simple when skilled artists make paintings, but I have too many confusing options to choose from. I mean really... there are so many colors and I can't figure out how to hold the brush. Do I use the bristly end or the hard end? And what do I put the paint on? There are too many confusing options. Art supply stores should make this easier. There should only be one paint brush and one type of paint and one color that does the 45 things that most painters need to do.
Don't get me wrong, some art supply stores sell paint-by-numbers. But it really limits what I want to paint. I've tried changing the paint-by-numbers "Cat" into "Dog", but it never turns out right... the media is just too limited.
I want something that is powerful, flexible, and allows me to look like I know what I'm doing even though I don't. I don't want to learn to be an artist, I just want to push a button.... er... pick up a paint brush and create professional art. I don't want to have to learn about composition, paint mixing, or any other information that is vital to understanding art. The canvas should read my mind.
</sarcasm>
Oh... no wonder it didn't work.
I'm curious how someone owned a computer in 1978 and never learned to program. There was little else you could do with them back then. Even in the mid 80's most people were still copying their programs out of magazines.
Didn't they do this on Junkyard Wars with a jet ski engine, duct tape, and a couple pieces of PCV?
Looking out my office window out towards the MS River after reading this story gives me an idea. I should patent rivers. I mean really, if natural discoveries can be patened, why shouldn't I get in on it? It's not like Hernando Desoto bothered to patent it. And why stop at rivers? I could patent the water that flows in them.
Let's see Microsoft top that with a XML patent. A patent on water would be a huge bargaining chip, don't you think? Are you thirsty Bill?
This could be so profitable...
(running to the patent office before someone patents oxygen)