Simplicity Rules

Elliot calls them web design pet peeves. He did such a great job of framing these in terms of the user, that I think anyone who browses the web will understand many of the same problems. Here are the three I’ve been seeing most lately:

• Blogs not having an RSS feed. This might be more of a geek thing, but it’s bound to become a bigger deal to more people as they begin using RSS to save themselves the time of checking sites they visit often. Ever since Mike Duffy told me to just sign up at BlogLines, it’s the way I consume most frequently-updated content. I have a friend who has a blog without RSS… and I visit once per week tops.
• Using frames so I can’t link to a specific page. I would extend this beyond frames. It’s any page that’s not easy to copy, save, and revisit.
• Playing crappy music without giving the option to turn it off. Real estate sites do a lot of this. Since people tend to surf at work, I imagine a lot of those sites blasting music get closed right quick.

And lastly, I would add one to Elliot’s list:

• Opening new windows. Use simple links and let me choose where to open it. No Javascript popups, no target=_blank.

Matt Blumberg reminds me about the upcoming Armistice Day (November 11) in the US, which we know better as Veteran’s Day. A few years ago, I produced an 11-11 special for a radio show and later featured it on DuVander.com.

• The extended meaning of November 11 (1.4 MB MP3)
• The number 11 is good (850 KB MP3)

I still believe programmers should not fall in love with their specific technology. While I know very little about art, I’d stretch that to say artists shouldn’t fall in love with a medium, either. If I only work in sculpture, I might miss a great way to express what I’m feeling by using watercolor. Okay, like I said, I don’t know much about art.

But I know plenty of programming languages. They are good for different things, in different circumstances. Some take more time to truly master. To be able to do anything in Perl takes a true artist’s touch. I use it for brute force, obvious things. I can grab a roller and paint a room, but if you give me the same paint and a large wall, I can’t make a mural.

Some languages, like PHP, give a little more of a boundary–a canvas. It still takes a certain flair to be able to put things in the right place, but there are some constraints to make the choices easier.

Then there are the simpler languages, like Cold Fusion and ASP.NET that try to give a little more direction. This is basically paint-by-number. That’s not meant as a dig (well, maybe against CF), just a truth about that medium. You can still make some great stuff, but sometimes you have to change the numbers around.

I want so very, very bad for Yahoo! to succeed with their new maps. And it’s not just because I own stock. They used to be the de facto standard for online mapping. They were clean, fast, simple, and printable.

These are clunky, slow, require Flash, and don’t appear to be very linkable.

There are a lot of little products out there on the web these days. As someone who would enjoy entering such a market someday, swimming through what is already out there does something to dissuade me. There are plenty of public products I haven’t even tried, but the popular way to scale an application these days seems to be the “private beta.”

The process goes like this:

1. Company makes an announcement about their great new product
2. Company provides a spot to sign up with my email address for some future launch
3. Go to 1

Now that time has passed, I’m getting all sorts of invites. Perhaps some of these companies gave themselves a November deadline? (Note to self: aim for mid-Month, mid-week, and heck, mid-day). In the past two days, I have received invites from:

• Measure Map
• YackPack
• Squidoo

I’ve been thinking a lot more about how ideas alone are worthless. With a restart of the stealth mode discussion, I’ve pretty much decided that the “open sourcing” of ideas is probably more good than bad.

But I’m looking for counter examples…

1. I saw a documentary on Craigslist last night. The filmmakers sent out eight volunteer camera crews all around San Francisco to document people who posted on Craigslist on one particular day. This is a great idea. The execution is what you might expect from eight volunteer camera crews.

2. A poor university student had the idea for The Million Dollar Homepage back on August 23. He launched the site three days later and has made over half a million dollars. There are many copycat sites now (possibly up around 500!), none doing even nearly this good. What if he had shared this idea and someone else was first?

Got any more?