I have done quite a bit of research into online photo albums and somehow seemed to have missed one (my excuse: it's in beta). Check out Flickr. I like the U.I. ... very clean. The feature I really liked is the ability to comment within a photo by highlighting an area. They call it "Notes and Tags" which is a dumb label for an excellent feature.

Working with DotNetNuke, I often have the need to convert a piece of DNN code into C# so I can modify/override it in my modules. I use the Snippets feature of Instant C# to do this. It is amazing how accurately the code conversion is done. This is a good product.

 

Although WinXP does not support more than one active virtual website, it allows you to define as many as you want. Here is a nice utility http://www.firstserved.net/services/iisadmin.php that lets you switch websites on XP quickly and easily.

Cross-browser support of web applications is generally overrated. Sure, it makes good business sense to make your product appeal to the broadest audience possible. But when it comes to web applications, I disagree.

Just today, when I released a public preview of NukeHTML (a HTML editor for DotNetNuke) there was a post on the ASP.Net forums about this issue. The poster was of the opinion that due to IE security flaws, more people use FireFox to edit their site content. This is impossible to prove and is therefore not a line of thought worth pursuing. It did get me thinking though. IE completely and totally dominates the browser market. That's what the numbers say and is not an opinion. Even if a growing number of people are adopting FireFox, for a software business, does it make sense to make their web-based products cross-browser compatible?

After a few minutes of Googling, I decided that no one really knows. The obvious answer is that if your product is going to be used by website visitors, it makes sense to design it so that it remains accessible to non-IE browsers. Of course, if most of your site visitors use non-IE browsers, a different decision would be forthcoming. However, if you are building a web application, for a specific use (in this case HTML editing), for a specific audience (DotNetNuke portal content editors), then cross-browser compatibility is a complete waste of time from a pure business standpoint.

Businesses exist for one reason -- to make a profit. If the total cost of developing a web app is increased by 20-40% to make it cross-browser compatible, is it better to go that route or is it better to keep the price down and make up for the (highly questionable) non-IE sales with an increase in IE volume? I think the latter strategy is going to be more profitable.

You can crunch the numbers in many ways, but here's a quick and dirty example. Let's say you have a product that will sell for $100 with IE-only compatibility and $120 with cross-browser compatibility (more development time = higher price). Assume the market size is 10,000 of which 9,000 are IE users and 1,000 are non-IE users. If 10% of the market purchased the IE-only product, you would get $90,000. Now, increase the price and make it cross-browser. Higher price causes the sales volume to decrease, let's say by 3%. Now, you would only make $84,000 ( (630+70) * 120). These numbers would vary, but if you add the long-term costs of upgrades, support, testing etc. cross-browser becomes less and less attractive.

My conclusion: cross-browser compatibility has its place, but is not always the best decision. Sometimes it's better (and more profitable) to stick with an IE-only solution.

Peace out.  

The only good things I can say about Gmail are that (a) the search is excellent, and (b) it prompted other mail providers to up their disk space.

I have been using it off and on for a few months now and find the interface is counter-intuitive. Initially, I chalked that up to lack of familiarity with the U.I., but after playing with it for a while, I have concluded that not only is the interface counter-intuitive, it is just awful. Perhaps all the usability folks at Google are too busy with other things, because it does not seem like anyone has given much thought to it. Yes, I am exaggerating, but it's not too far from the truth.

Minimalism is good...I like minimalism...but when you are providing a webmail client, there are some expectations and Gmail falls short. Some of the issues I have with it:
- Variable location of primary action links such as Reply, Forward etc. These are at the bottom of the email message. On long messages you have to scroll to find them. You can click on More Options at the top, but this is a silly place for some obvious functions.
- Two clicks to delete -- Actions, Move to Trash. Dumb!
- Message thread in chronological order (i.e. conversations( -- I hate this. I do not need to see older messages first. I rarely need anything but the most recent message to have thread-sync in my mind. Who cares about what was said three weeks ago. And if I do, isn't that what search is for.
- No personalities -- I have grown to love Yahoo!'s personality feature so I can use the same mail client for managing multiple email accounts.
- Text overload -- This is a contradiction. With all the DHTML in use, Gmail assumes a newer browser (although I am sure it degrades well). Why then the emphasis on text? Some interface actions deserve buttons. Make them clear to the user that they are actions.
- New metaphor -- Everybody is familiar with a folder metaphor. Why come up with a new and unnecessary metaphor for organizing messages called Labels. This is another dumb feature.
- No WYSIWYG editor.

I could go on and on. I believe good U.I.'s should not make you think. They should be easy to work with and key functions should be easy to find and perform. Google search is fantastic...simple and intuitive. I wish I could say the same for Gmail. My opinion -- Gmail sucks!