mediajunk

Bill Thompson has an entertaining diatribe against web 2.0 in The Register (via Nick Carr).

I agree that web 2.0 is over-hyped (hey, even boo.com is relaunching and it's registered to a Dublin-based woman; make of that what you will).

However, there seems to be a sense among traditional software developers, Thompson among them, that the pendulum has shifted too far in favour of interface designers.

But Ajaxian interface techniques are not always popular with interface designers and usability experts.

Many so-called rich internet applications (RIAs) are not cross-browser compatible. They are a nightmare for visually impaired users who rely on screen readers, and a pain in the neck for millions of internet users in developing countries where broadband is, ahem, a pipe dream.

Interfaces that update on the fly cause usability headaches for interaction designers for one simple reason: with RIAs, the web page doesn't refresh.

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, page refresh is useful; it signals that the application is responding to your actions. And, until all sites are RIAs, users will expect page refresh. This was exactly what Vikram Goyal discovered when he decided to try an Ajaxian search interface out on some users:

I was happy with the result and so was my manager and we decided to show this to the users. They hated it.

So, while the basic infrastructure that websites are built on may well need to be remodelled, reconsidered and upgraded, we're still a long way from achieving usable interfaces as a standard.