[1]
The Future of Web Interfaces
Keynote Speakers
/
Pemberton, S.
Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'05: Human-Computer Interaction
2005-09-12
p.4-5
Summary: The Web took the world by storm, and as a result developed rapidly in many
directions. However it still exhibits many aspects of its early development,
such as its visual and computer-screen orientation. But the Web is still
developing rapidly: there are now more browsers on mobile telephones than on
desktops, and there is a vast diversity in types of devices, types and
orientations of screens, and sizes (in number of pixels), and resolutions (in
dpi) of screens.
Dealing with this diversity is impossible to address just by keeping a list
of all the possible devices, or even a list of the most-used ones, and
producing different sites for them, since the complexity would be unmanageable,
and because once sites started turning away browsers and devices they didn't
know, the browser makers responded by disguising themselves to such sites as
other browsers.
On top of this diversity there is also the diversity required for
accessibility. Although providing access for the visually impaired is an
important reason for accessibility, we are all more or less visually impaired
at one time or another. When displaying an application on a projector screen at
a conference or meeting, the whole audience will typically be visually impaired
in comparison to someone sitting behind a computer screen. The existence of
separate socalled "Ten-foot Interfaces" (for people controlling their computers
by remote control from an armchair ten feet away) demonstrates that the
original applications are not designed for accessibility. Furthermore, Google
(and all other search engines) is blind, and sees only what a blind user sees
of a page; as the webmaster of a large bank has remarked, "we have noticed that
improving accessibility increases our Google rating".
The success of the Web has turned the browser into a central application
area for the user, and you can spend most of your day working with applications
in the browser, reading mail, shopping, searching your own diskdrive. The
advent of applications such as Google Maps and GMail has focussed minds on
delivering applications via the web, not least because it eliminates the
problems involved with versioning: everyone always has the most recent version
of your application. Since Web-based applications have benefits for both user
and provider, we can only expect to see more of them in the future.
But this approach comes at a cost. Google Maps is of the order of 200K of
Javascript code. Such applications are only writable by programming experts,
and producing an application is not possible by the sort of people who often
produce web pages for their own use.
The Web Interfaces landscape is in turmoil at the moment. Microsoft has
announced a new markup language and vector graphics language for the next
version of Windows; probably as a response Adobe has acquired Macromedia and
therefore Flash; W3C have standards for applications in the form of XForms,
XHTML and SVG and are working on "compound documents"; and other browser
manufacturers are calling for their own version of HTML.
What are we to make of these different approaches? Are they conflicting?
Have any addressed authorability, device-independence, usability or
accessibility? Is it even possible to make accessible applications? HTML made
creating hypertext documents just about as easy as it could be; do any of the
new approaches address this need for simplicity, or has power been
irretrievably returned to the programmers?
This talk discusses the requirements for Web Applications, and the
underpinnings necessary to make Web Applications follow in the same spirit that
engendered the Web in the first place.
[2]
Scratching someone else's itch: (why open source can't do usability)
Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2004
v.11
n.1
p.72
© Copyright 2004 ACM
Summary:
Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal
itch.
- -- Eric Raymond,
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar There's a closely related issue, however that I don't know how to solve yet
without a big player with a lot of money, which is doing systematic user
interface end user testing. We're not very good at that yet, we need to find a
way to be good at it.
- -- Eric Raymond,
- Why Open Source will Rule
[3]
The power of two
Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2004
v.11
n.4
p.64
© Copyright 2004 ACM
[4]
Things that stay us from the swift completion of our appointed tasks
(revisited)
Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2004
v.11
n.6
p.64
© Copyright 2004 ACM
[5]
That old Janx Spirit
DEPARTMENT: Editoral
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2003
v.10
n.1
p.4
© Copyright 2003 ACM
[6]
The kiss of the spiderbot
DEPARTMENT: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2003
v.10
n.1
p.44
© Copyright 2003 ACM
[7]
Letter writing, telephones, and television
DEPARTMENT: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2003
v.10
n.3
p.64-ff
© Copyright 2003 ACM
[8]
Restrictive practices
DEPARTMENT: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2003
v.10
n.4
p.64
© Copyright 2003 ACM
[9]
Hotel heartbreak
DEPARTMENT: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2003
v.10
n.5
p.64
© Copyright 2003 ACM
[10]
So big, so bad, so often
DEPARTMENT: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2003
v.10
n.6
p.64-ff
© Copyright 2003 ACM
[11]
Electric IP
DEPARTMENT: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2002
v.9
n.1
p.56
© Copyright 2002 ACM
[12]
Choose one: fast, correct, or pleasurable
COLUMN: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2002
v.9
n.2
p.128-127
© Copyright 2002 ACM
[13]
Go away!
DEPARTMENT: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2002
v.9
n.4
p.52-51
© Copyright 2002 ACM
[14]
A pixel is not a point
DEPARTMENT: Reflections
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2002
v.9
n.5
p.64
© Copyright 2002 ACM
[15]
INTERNET
arCHIve: A look back at SIGCHI
/
Pemberton, Steven
2001-11-21
Keywords: SIGCHI, history
Summary: Interviews with past chairs of SIGCHI and other people about the development
of the group.
[16]
Support concepts for Web navigation: a cognitive engineering approach
/
Neerincx, Mark A.
/
Lindenberg, Jasper
/
Pemberton, Steven
Proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on the World Wide Web
2001-05-01
p.119-128
Keywords: World Wide Web, cognitive engineering, navigation, network user interface,
usability
© Copyright 2001 Authors
[17]
Reflections: Photocopy this article!
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2001
v.8
n.1
p.64
© Copyright 2001 ACM
[18]
Reflections: The design of notations
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2001
v.8
n.2
p.128-126
© Copyright 2001 ACM
[19]
Reflections: In search of the killer app
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2001
v.8
n.4
p.64
© Copyright 2001 ACM
[20]
Reflections: the culture of uncertainty
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2001
v.8
n.5
p.51-52
© Copyright 2001 ACM
[21]
Reflections: did convergence kill the clock?
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2001
v.8
n.6
p.52
© Copyright 2001 ACM
[22]
Reflections: the demise of the book
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2000
v.7
n.1
p.92
© Copyright 2000 ACM
[23]
Reflections: it rings for thee
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2000
v.7
n.3
p.72
© Copyright 2000 ACM
[24]
Reflections: the accidental death of reviewing
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2000
v.7
n.4
p.56
© Copyright 2000 ACM
[25]
Reflections: so much for WYSIWYG
/
Pemberton, Steven
interactions
2000
v.7
n.5
p.60
© Copyright 2000 ACM
