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Why our website looks like an operating system

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Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#271

Post by hliyan »

chain030 wrote: post #264
james_impliu wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can remember a discussion with Cory (who built this with Eli, the front end eng) on the topic of "why do all websites consist of a collection of long scroll-y pages / is that appropriate for our business?" and we concluded it wasn't optimal. at the time, we were trying to figure out how to add more products in without it becoming messy, and we concluded we're trying to do a lot more than just what would work well f…

This sounds like an expensive solution to a marketing problem re. the product. And if one digs even further, perhaps an issue with your product line - the benefits of it aren't immediately presentable in a simplified way to the extent it is differentiated relative to the competitors.

Changing the product line to fit the marketing narrative sounds like putting the cart before the horse.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#272

Post by palmfacehn »

After closing the window, which is an approximation of a page, the back button does not return me to the previous page in Firefox. I can see that the address bar is changed but the content doesn't change back to that page. After clicking through to another view I can use the back button to achieve this basic functionality.

This is a cute way to build a lander. It may result in more sales because it invites the user to interact and experiment with the novel layout.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#273

Post by anal_reactor »

keyle wrote: post #13

It's neat but it runs like a dog. I opened a couple of things and tried to move the window... I'd take a statically generated bunch of webpages over this. If you're going to make one of those multi window webpages looking thing, make it good. To note, in the past, this was a big no-no because SEO was important. You had to have good SEO for search engines to index your content efficiently and show up well ranked in se…

Opera Mobile here. Performance is bad.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#274

Post by Twey »

badsectoracula wrote: post #126
Twey wrote: post #3

I've always thought ‘multi-document interfaces’ as we used to call them are an anti-pattern. I have a perfectly good window manager; why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in? (Mind you on mobile I very much don't have a perfectly good window manager, and indeed can't even open multiple instances of most apps…)

> I have a perfectly good window manager; why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in? Because some applications do need multiple windows in the same application context. A common example would be image editors. It is unfortunate that almost all generic MDI implementations (Win32 and Qt basically) are incredibly barebones. I want to have multiple windows visible when i'm usi…

The ‘application context’ isn't a concept that adds value, at least for the applications I've seen. For things where the application windows do need to be treated differently (e.g. patch bays that can be connected together, or widgets that can be fused into larger widgets [1]) I have more sympathy for applications that want to do their own window management. But for something like the browser just grouping Web pages together, that's something entirely unrelated to the browser functionality that should be available in the window manager.

[1]: https://wiki.haskell.org/Eros

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#275

Post by akagusu »

hliyan wrote: post #149

Why this feels so incredibly appealing compared to prevailing designs is probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts. But I can personally speak to at least one aspect, having worked for a company that does high end web sites and strategy for large S…

> the speed and ease with which I can find what I want (as a potential customer) using that top navigation menu is superior to anything I've seen done so far.

The menu bar is one of the most effective and proved UI pattern. Unfortunately, on Linux we have an entire desktop environment that ditched the menu bar for hamburger menus, which are one of the most ineffective UI pattern.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#276

Post by Twey »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #36
Twey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's still a little too restrictive. Sometimes you really do want multiple groups of windows that may belong to the same (think multiple browser windows each with multiple tabs) or different applications (e.g. grouped by task). It's not hard to see how the application marketplace leads to every app doing everything including managing all the things it does, but it's not good for the user.

Custom groupings is a nice feature too, but that feature can live happily alongside app groups. In fact I think the two would compliment each other nicely.

Well it subsumes app groups, I think? If anything app groups become just a default/prebuilt grouping policy.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#278

Post by Twey »

boredtofears wrote: post #19
Twey wrote: post #3

I've always thought ‘multi-document interfaces’ as we used to call them are an anti-pattern. I have a perfectly good window manager; why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in? (Mind you on mobile I very much don't have a perfectly good window manager, and indeed can't even open multiple instances of most apps…)

To throw gasoline on the fire: this how I’ve always felt about tmux. Why use an incomplete in terminal windowing system when I can just have multiple terminal windows open managed by the superior OS window system. (That said I know tmux is sometimes the only option and then it makes sense to me)

The difference is that tmux, with all its state, typically runs on a remote system. The graphical equivalent would be a VNC &c. session, assuming that the remote machine has the prerequisites for that (which is a pretty big ask).

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#280

Post by dogleash »

hliyan wrote: post #149

Why this feels so incredibly appealing compared to prevailing designs is probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts. But I can personally speak to at least one aspect, having worked for a company that does high end web sites and strategy for large S…

>probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts

Very little here that isn't explained by age-old HCI concepts on design.

>And one of the conclusions may be that our current UI/UX philosophy has inadvertantly become user-hostile

Nope. You see the "X" stands for experience. And nothing ever betrays it's own name. You're just a computer nerd that nerds too hard to get it. You've probably even used a terminal without bellyaching for the next few days. What could you know about what normies want? *cough*

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