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Less is more
by Chris Wise on Thursday 07/Dec/2000, @16:45
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On a small screen it's very important to make as much space available for the viewing pane, by mininising the interface. The interface can be minimised by makeing thnigs smaller, hiding them until needed or getting rid of them all together.
As an example of the latter, get rid of the tile button. The screen is too small to support overlapping windows.
As suggested by others, the scroll bars should be half the size or less, if they are to be static, or a pop up option.
The URL location box should be hidden, probably brought up with a button on the button bar. The title bar probably should be removed or made optional.
The button bar should be shrunk a little. The Words File and Bookmarks should be replaced by buttons so that all the buttons can fit on one row (including shut and minimise). Actually, you could do without minimise.
On a PDA, the menu bar is usually hidden, and brought up with a hardware menu button.
If you have never used a palm pilot, you should try to get a hold of one, at least for a few weeks. This is the best example of a minimalist design that I know of - it's amazing. I read that the developers actually measured how many pen taps/strokes were needed for every possible action that could be performed in their program suite and tried to minimise this without making the interface ambiguous or confusing.
Chris |
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