As Rod suggested, this is pretty old news.
This begs the question: has this style of user-interface failed to catch
on
more widely because of:
- Technological limitations;
- Insufficient creativity and inspiration; or
- Insufficient usability?
I'm tempted to eliminate #3 on the grounds that I don't think this style
of
UI has been widespread enough to have been subjected to, and then failed, some sort of usability meta-experiment.
This is not to say that it won't ultimately fail such a meta-experiment -- just that it hasn't really had a chance to fail it yet.
Rich
[David Shorthouse wrote:] I agree with Rich on this one. The problem with most of these solutions is that they have been built using Java. Thus, the steep learning curve (#1) does little for accelerating widespread use and tinkering (#2). Flash/Flex, though not open source, has the greatest penetration of any browser plug-in. If I had to put my money somewhere, that's where I'd concentrate my efforts. What we need is a platform upon which creative developers can "plug into" in a fashion similar to how Drupal developers create modules. A few competitions and a very simple, online IDE to create exports for rapid reuse would help ;)~
David P. Shorthouse ------------------------------------------------------ Department of Biological Sciences CW-403, Biological Sciences Centre University of Alberta Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9 mailto:dps1@ualberta.ca http://canadianarachnology.dyndns.org http://www.spiderwebwatch.org http://ispiders.blogspot.com ------------------------------------------------------