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Ah come on. He does have a bit of a point. Sure youtube has videos. Excepting the page that actually plays a single video he does have a point. There's exactly
by waps 13y ago
Ah come on. He does have a bit of a point. Sure youtube has videos. Excepting the page that actually plays a single video he does have a point. There's exactly one piece of somewhat moving interface in the entire site. Like in windows 3.1 (and they were hardly the first to do that). The rest is text and a grid of images. Even the most advanced websites are not much better. I mean I love how google has used moving gifs in the google.com/photos stuff to actually show something moving, but that's about as advanced as interfaces get. In some ways, including what can be done with interfaces, the web is only at the level desktop interfaces were at 10 years ago.
I think the author of the article wants to compare that to, say, the starcraft menu interface. Or windows desktop applications. Or, to a lesser extent, flash interfaces. This would be a good example. Can you imagine doing this in HTML ? http://demo.northkingdom.com/gettheglass/ http://demo.northkingdom.com/gettheglass/
And he does have a point. Recreating the starcraft interface in HTML5+CSS+Javascript is possible of course. In the same sense that you can write windows 95 in pure lambda calculus (frankly, I think the lambda calculus rewrite would be easier since there's translation tools).
I'm with the rest of the people here. Those fancy interfaces have little function, don't interact well with the rest of the world (e.g. search engines, content aggregators, ...), they're accessibility nightmares, ... But they're cool. But my opinion on them has exceptions : for some things, like games, that's more important than all those other things.
- hamburglar 13y ago> There's exactly one piece of somewhat moving interface in the entire site. [(YouTube)] You are making the exact same mistake he is. You are picturing what you remember of YouTube and in your recollection, it is simple. This is because they have done a reasonable job of using a simple design, not because they have avoided "moving" things. Go look and you will find plenty of menus, tabs, comments, and other ui elements that are built of the exact stuff he says is worthless. Holding any of these sites up as an example of being essentially just text and a few images just indicates that you don't have much of an eye for detail.
- waps 13y agoI'm not claiming the youtube interface is not functional, I'm claiming it's ugly. It's not about whether interface elements are animated or not (I am criticizing however how hard it is to make them move). And I understand us techies like a really simple design. The difference is that I don't see the world as sharing my opinion. Simple websites are good for various technical reasons, and I understand that. Scraping them (not that ggl makes it easy), interacting, using the website as an API, all things that matter to techies. But let's be honest : they're ugly. Youtube, for example looks like an ancient file manager, at best. Let's compare, a native application with a -somewhat- similar purpose versus youtube. XBMC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34h_sQ7-G1s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34h_sQ7-G1s TiVo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvgoLVzijE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvgoLVzijE (I realize it's an irritating commercial. But look at the interface) Netflix on ios: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-4_ADXYT3E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-4_ADXYT3E (sorry about the reviewer, and already much worse than XBMC or TiVo) Youtube: http://www.youtube.com http://www.youtube.com This is a very nice animated interface (imho): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCw0eWa-LkA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCw0eWa-LkA (not related to videos though) The sad part is, that you're right about Youtube as compared to some of it's online alternatives. Compared to those, it's not bad. But the whole point was to criticize online development tools like HTML and Javascript, as compared to offline ones. Flash versus HTML and the quality of interfaces they enable. I would even go so far as saying that, when it comes to native apps XBMC and TiVo count as "good". They don't quite match my standards for "great" at all. Youtube ... euhm ... is at the level where I'd have trouble accepting it from a first-year programming student. Certainly wouldn't merit an A.
- hamburglar 13y ago> But let's be honest : they're ugly. Youtube, for example looks like an ancient file manager, at best. I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say, but it seems fairly obvious you don't agree with the OP's crazy pronouncement that websites should just be text and a few images. We may be in one of those "violent agreement" situations, so I'm just going to call this argument done. :)