Reminder: The In-Between Stuff Matters

Christopher Schanck compares his iPhone to his Droid X, and in doing so, highlights the interface paradigm introduced by the Android back button:

You know how every Twitter app on the iPhone has its own built in browser? And how each embedded browser works almost, but not quite like, all the other embedded browsers? With each embedded browser having different buttons, different scaling strategies, different rules for rotation? All of this exists to prevent you from having to leave your Twitter app and go to Safari, which would render the link properly. Going from TweetDeck to Safari is a big deal. After you switch to Safari, when you are done reading the link, looking at the picture, whatever, then you are stuck at a precipice — you want to go back to TweetDeck right where you left off. How do you do that? Home. Restart TweetDeck. Hope it is written such that you pick of where you left off. But traversing through the Home key and the Springboard is incredibly interruptive. Indeed, leaving TweetDeck or any other app in order to go to Safari feels like a huge step on the iPhone.

Contrast that with the Android Way: just click on the link, and whatever app you set as the default handler for that action springs open. Noise around, read it, whatever. Then just hit the back button and you are right where you left off. No barrier. It truly blurs the line between applications.

I know I’ve linked to it before, but it’s really worth repeating: The In-Between Stuff Matters.

Of the web

The other day, my Dad suggested that I might like the Stack Overflow podcast, so I subscribed.

At around 46 minutes into episode 79, Joel Spolsky mentions brochureware-style web design:

You know the kind of site I’m talking about? It’s just like you can imagine it printed on glossy paper and being given to you by hand. And it just doesn’t look like a web page.

But it’s the next line that’s the kicker:

It’s on the web. But it’s not of the web.

And right there, Joel put his finger on exactly what bugs me about so much of what CBC does online, particularly with radio show websites. Yes, it’s on the web. But it’s not of the web.

Great artists steal

Via Jack Shedd’s Big Contrarian, a terrific 6-minute video from designer Jeff Veen:

[YouTube link]