6 ms·

This doesn't really go into what a card "is". Is it just a different colored background or a box with a shadow on it? Other than that, a card's only defining f

by woah 13y ago

This doesn't really go into what a card "is". Is it just a different colored background or a box with a shadow on it? Other than that, a card's only defining feature is that it is a grouping of text, images, and links, which has been common on the web since 1993. Is the idea more that we are moving towards groupings of content which can be consumed by themselves?

gojomo 13y ago
At this stage I think the 'card' concept benefits by being loosely defined. A followup tweet from the author (https://twitter.com/padday/status/376019194518589441 https://twitter.com/padday/status/376019194518589441) emphasizes certain interactions: "don't think 'rectangle', think flipping, folding, expanding, stacking, grouping, sorting" So yes, it's rectangular display groupings, but also small-chunks, repurposeable, and amenable to certain interactions reminiscent of physical cards.
- Nate75Sanders 13y ago
  Sounds like the author wants it to be defined more by the verbs it can be an object of than its looks. I haven't read the article fully yet, but this seems reasonable to me.
- miscreant 13y ago
  It would be great to have data available in "card format" so that information could be aggregated by users, other apps, or websites as they saw fit. Maybe as an alternative to "mobile" versions of websites, for example. I've toyed around with some ideas here: http://ghn.cloudapp.net http://ghn.cloudapp.net - you can right-click to flip, or swipe left/right on each "card" if you are on a touch device.
- elnate 13y ago
  Like a window?
- taeric 13y ago
  I can't decide if I like this idea or not. The only reason that stacking/grouping/etc physical cards works is because they are typically fully known. Otherwise, you are just restricting what I can already do with an RSS feed to now having to worry about some potentially idiotic metaphor for manipulation. That is, when you stack playing cards for use in, say, solitaire, you only have to see a very small portion of the card. Specifically, what suite and value it has. The only reason the cards are the same size is actually to conceal this information when they are turned around. Contrast this with how I currently scan news headlines in most rss software. By seeing a list of the headlines. Sure, I don't know what the body of the messages are without opening them fully, but the entire point is that I do not feel I have time to read all of the articles and I am relying on a well written summary in the form of a title for my first level of curation. Moving this to Twitter and the "card" api. I fail to see how focusing on making everything cards will necessarily be better than just focusing on keeping it small. Consider, I can quickly scan all of my emails from my phone, not because each is presented as a cute card, but because the "list" metaphor has already won there. The effort placed in making the entire message "look good" on the phone is completely avoided by keeping the message "textual" and giving me a list of subjects and authors. Similarly, twitter has dominance not because they are aiming for "cards," but because their content is guaranteed short. And really, I don't know as that this is a groundbreaking discovery. It is the reason "headline news" is the most disseminated. Sure, fancy graphics and cute typography is a wonderful differentiator, but few things compete with a well done title.
  - TuringTest 13y ago
    Cards can be used at many contexts, for many purposes. Self-contained tweets is good for small talk and social content sharing, but RSS-like snippets that link to external articles are also a valid option. Technically, cards are not far away from any other previous content-delivery system; what's specific to them is their structure - centered around easy-to-scan bits of content, that can be directly linked to. This makes them more apt for social sharing and aggregation than the classic web of interlinked whole pages. Some have pointed out how they increase the granularity of content. I also foresee them being used as the basis for an end-user development platform, a la Bret Victor's interactive drawing (but not necessarily geometric), as this structure is friendlier and simpler than semantic markup. I believe that this metaphor could close the gap that "Visual Basic", widget-based languages had respect the need to use imperative languages to define behavior. That "cards can be manipulated" is actually a good thing. It allows both the content creator and the end user to select which tools to use for handling the content. In web pages, snippets can only be manipulated with whatever tools the content platform provides; conversely, RSS feeds are entirely handled by the client, and it's difficult for the content provider to specify some suggested tools (other than cues to some pre-defined microformats). Imagine a system where users could share content cards like they do on current social webs, but where they're able to define new simple automatic procedures in the way that Victor's "programming-by-drawing-comic-strips" allows for, and I think that's the future of the user-facing side of the web. Hypercard shows that the card metaphor is a good basis for this; and the standards are finally mature enough to make such a system possible on the web.
- voyou 13y ago
  The problem is, once you make the definition more specific, like this, the idea that "cards are the future" starts looking much more dubious - I'm not sure any of the examples of supposed "cards" in the post fit this definition. Maybe Twitter and Google Now have enough of these elements to count, just about, but I don't see how Pinterest or Spotify do. "Here's some websites that put information in boxes" is plausible but not very interesting; "cards are the future of the web" is more interesting, but doesn't really have any evidence to support it.
martindale 13y ago
A "card" is merely a convenient name for the concept of microdata/microformats [1], which happens to often be _visually_ represented as a snippet, or a "card". The real key here is standardizing the various metadata formats, such as the title field; which ranges from Twitter's `twitter:title` to Facebook's `og:title`. [1]: I'm building my augmented reality data network, http://aris.io http://aris.io, based on a similar premise, but abstracting these out to explicit "providers".
wuliwong 13y ago
Agreed. If google added a border with some CSS shadows to their results, they would be considered cards.
- woah 13y ago
  that's my startup! boom
  - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
    didn't cuil[1] already try that? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil
- woah 13y ago
  that's my startup! boom
- woah 13y ago
  that's my startup! boom
gillianseed 13y ago
While the current trend is obviously about making it easier to navigate using mobile, I could see 'cards' making it easier to navigate using eye-tracking (possibly combined with voice), which is where I think we're heading in the not too far off future (we're a lazy species).
sitkack 13y ago
Data formatted in a regular pattern so that we can easily parse it.

by woah 13y ago

gojomo 13y ago

At this stage I think the 'card' concept benefits by being loosely defined. A followup tweet from the author (https://twitter.com/padday/status/376019194518589441 https://twitter.com/padday/status/376019194518589441) emphasizes certain interactions: "don't think 'rectangle', think flipping, folding, expanding, stacking, grouping, sorting" So yes, it's rectangular display groupings, but also small-chunks, repurposeable, and amenable to certain interactions reminiscent of physical cards.

Nate75Sanders 13y ago
Sounds like the author wants it to be defined more by the verbs it can be an object of than its looks. I haven't read the article fully yet, but this seems reasonable to me.
miscreant 13y ago
It would be great to have data available in "card format" so that information could be aggregated by users, other apps, or websites as they saw fit. Maybe as an alternative to "mobile" versions of websites, for example. I've toyed around with some ideas here: http://ghn.cloudapp.net http://ghn.cloudapp.net - you can right-click to flip, or swipe left/right on each "card" if you are on a touch device.
elnate 13y ago
Like a window?
taeric 13y ago
I can't decide if I like this idea or not. The only reason that stacking/grouping/etc physical cards works is because they are typically fully known. Otherwise, you are just restricting what I can already do with an RSS feed to now having to worry about some potentially idiotic metaphor for manipulation. That is, when you stack playing cards for use in, say, solitaire, you only have to see a very small portion of the card. Specifically, what suite and value it has. The only reason the cards are the same size is actually to conceal this information when they are turned around. Contrast this with how I currently scan news headlines in most rss software. By seeing a list of the headlines. Sure, I don't know what the body of the messages are without opening them fully, but the entire point is that I do not feel I have time to read all of the articles and I am relying on a well written summary in the form of a title for my first level of curation. Moving this to Twitter and the "card" api. I fail to see how focusing on making everything cards will necessarily be better than just focusing on keeping it small. Consider, I can quickly scan all of my emails from my phone, not because each is presented as a cute card, but because the "list" metaphor has already won there. The effort placed in making the entire message "look good" on the phone is completely avoided by keeping the message "textual" and giving me a list of subjects and authors. Similarly, twitter has dominance not because they are aiming for "cards," but because their content is guaranteed short. And really, I don't know as that this is a groundbreaking discovery. It is the reason "headline news" is the most disseminated. Sure, fancy graphics and cute typography is a wonderful differentiator, but few things compete with a well done title.
- TuringTest 13y ago
  Cards can be used at many contexts, for many purposes. Self-contained tweets is good for small talk and social content sharing, but RSS-like snippets that link to external articles are also a valid option. Technically, cards are not far away from any other previous content-delivery system; what's specific to them is their structure - centered around easy-to-scan bits of content, that can be directly linked to. This makes them more apt for social sharing and aggregation than the classic web of interlinked whole pages. Some have pointed out how they increase the granularity of content. I also foresee them being used as the basis for an end-user development platform, a la Bret Victor's interactive drawing (but not necessarily geometric), as this structure is friendlier and simpler than semantic markup. I believe that this metaphor could close the gap that "Visual Basic", widget-based languages had respect the need to use imperative languages to define behavior. That "cards can be manipulated" is actually a good thing. It allows both the content creator and the end user to select which tools to use for handling the content. In web pages, snippets can only be manipulated with whatever tools the content platform provides; conversely, RSS feeds are entirely handled by the client, and it's difficult for the content provider to specify some suggested tools (other than cues to some pre-defined microformats). Imagine a system where users could share content cards like they do on current social webs, but where they're able to define new simple automatic procedures in the way that Victor's "programming-by-drawing-comic-strips" allows for, and I think that's the future of the user-facing side of the web. Hypercard shows that the card metaphor is a good basis for this; and the standards are finally mature enough to make such a system possible on the web.
voyou 13y ago
The problem is, once you make the definition more specific, like this, the idea that "cards are the future" starts looking much more dubious - I'm not sure any of the examples of supposed "cards" in the post fit this definition. Maybe Twitter and Google Now have enough of these elements to count, just about, but I don't see how Pinterest or Spotify do. "Here's some websites that put information in boxes" is plausible but not very interesting; "cards are the future of the web" is more interesting, but doesn't really have any evidence to support it.

martindale 13y ago

A "card" is merely a convenient name for the concept of microdata/microformats [1], which happens to often be _visually_ represented as a snippet, or a "card". The real key here is standardizing the various metadata formats, such as the title field; which ranges from Twitter's `twitter:title` to Facebook's `og:title`. [1]: I'm building my augmented reality data network, http://aris.io http://aris.io, based on a similar premise, but abstracting these out to explicit "providers".

wuliwong 13y ago

Agreed. If google added a border with some CSS shadows to their results, they would be considered cards.

woah 13y ago
that's my startup! boom
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  didn't cuil[1] already try that? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil
woah 13y ago
that's my startup! boom
woah 13y ago
that's my startup! boom

gillianseed 13y ago

While the current trend is obviously about making it easier to navigate using mobile, I could see 'cards' making it easier to navigate using eye-tracking (possibly combined with voice), which is where I think we're heading in the not too far off future (we're a lazy species).

sitkack 13y ago

Data formatted in a regular pattern so that we can easily parse it.