Friday, May 06, 2005
Thursday, May 05, 2005
3-d web browsing
What I'm referring to is the ability of web pages to display actionable sub-menus.
There are lots of navigation menus that do this, but what I'm referring to is a bit different. After some thought I realize navigation menus are idempotent -- they have no lasting effect on the world.
Fill out forms and server side programming are different. When a user clicks on a button or a hyperlink, it triggers an event on the server. This changes the content of subsequent pages. For example, at eBay the sold items have sub-menus where an item can be relisted, an invoice can be sent, or an item can be marked as paid, etc. [screenshot would be appropriate].
Clicking an actions such as 'mark as paid' changes the contents of the menu so that the choice is no longer visible. Because the 'mark as paid' link is in a sub-menu that requires a click to be made visible, I call this 3-d web browsing. It feels like you're visiting a new page when you click the link to show the sub-menu, but what is really happening here is that a sub-menu div is being 'unhidden'.
Is 3-d web browsing the right word for this? Was it a design flaw, or on purpose? This is just starting to catch on for cgi type actions. This plus XMLHttp, and a little javascript, and things could get really interesting. (ajax==actionable javascript?)
final note: I think most designers would make the unhide effect something that happens onMouseOver instead of onClick. But end-users probably prefer the click effect since that gets you really focused on the list of actions available.
There are lots of navigation menus that do this, but what I'm referring to is a bit different. After some thought I realize navigation menus are idempotent -- they have no lasting effect on the world.
Fill out forms and server side programming are different. When a user clicks on a button or a hyperlink, it triggers an event on the server. This changes the content of subsequent pages. For example, at eBay the sold items have sub-menus where an item can be relisted, an invoice can be sent, or an item can be marked as paid, etc. [screenshot would be appropriate].
Clicking an actions such as 'mark as paid' changes the contents of the menu so that the choice is no longer visible. Because the 'mark as paid' link is in a sub-menu that requires a click to be made visible, I call this 3-d web browsing. It feels like you're visiting a new page when you click the link to show the sub-menu, but what is really happening here is that a sub-menu div is being 'unhidden'.
Is 3-d web browsing the right word for this? Was it a design flaw, or on purpose? This is just starting to catch on for cgi type actions. This plus XMLHttp, and a little javascript, and things could get really interesting. (ajax==actionable javascript?)
final note: I think most designers would make the unhide effect something that happens onMouseOver instead of onClick. But end-users probably prefer the click effect since that gets you really focused on the list of actions available.
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