Some intuitive likes and dislikes
(Replies to this are broken up so that we can create separate threads about specific issues and I can chunk out my responses).
It may be sensible to abstract this a bit further: screen size and input methods (mouse vs. touch vs. voice ...). Netbooks, for example, have small screen size, but typically no touch screens, so a "tablet UI" that assumes touch may not make sense there. In general, I notice that the word touch does not appear in the design docs, but I think we have to talk and think very explicitly about touching vs. clicking vs. speaking.
- I was talking with Tomasz about this exact thing, and how we really are talking about resolutions and capabilities rather than specific device types (mobile/tablet/browser). In effect, though, we have arguably four "near term" target resolutions:
- Smart phone (small display, touch oriented)
- Touch tablets (medium display, touch oriented)
- Notebook computers (medium display, mouse oriented)
- Desktop computers (large display, mouse oriented)
However, we can't discount the Future, where something may be inserted into home theater devices (with kinetic and motion recognition inputs) as well.
Except in a few specific locations, I have avoided talking about "touching" versus "clicking" or "swiping" because I didn't want to get hung up in the mechanics of how things behave just yet (this is something that we nearly always bikeshed on). The one area I've been more explicit about it with is with the behavior of the sliders and top bar on mobile devices.
I am going to update the main document with more descriptions about various "device" targets as well as some rationales about choices (for example, large search boxes are arguably more important for large resolution, mouse driven interfaces, since Fitt's law makes it hard to get a mouse there with accuracy very fast).
I am thinking about some other devices.
- the first is old phones, which are still present in Europe for people which don’t renew their phone or don’t want a smart phone, and probably in Africa (I don’t know the state of the market there) -> small display, key-taping oriented.
- the second is e-book readers (like the Amazon Kindle), although these aren’t still widely used and web browsing is not their main feature, but web browsing is possible on many devices (although quite painful, at least on a Bookeen Orizon). Perhaps it shouldn’t be taken into account now as it, but kept in mind (particularly for projects like Wikisource, or Wikibooks), I heard people talking about a mix between e-book readers and smart phones in the future, although it depends of the evolution of the technologies and practices. The current specifications of such devices are: small display (600x800 on most devices), grayscale only (generally 8 or 16 grayscales), touch oriented, and the current most relevant (here) specificity is the time of refreshing (=renew entirely the screen, mandatory for any change in the display) of about 1 second.
- it should also be taken into account devices for disabled users: Braille terminals and text-to-speech softwares; these could probably taken into accound during the implementation but it’s worth keeping them in mind.
