Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
One of the most creative and innovative websites I have come across lately is a site designed be the company Ai Interactive, http://www.a-i.tw/root.html?lang=en. This company, which is dedicated to web development, has explored fresh techniques for interactivity that are quite engaging. It is an award winning site that explores the use of space, motion and interactivity. It is even featured on a website devoted to find the most innovated web sites being developed.
When I first came upon the website it wasn’t clear what I was going to find, but the site begins by giving instructions telling the user how to interact with the site. It starts with a pink ball which has a pop up window to the top of it saying “Drag the ball to change view angles.” As you move the ball around, one can travel through a seemingly 3 dimensional space. Things are moving past, around, and away from the user, etc., all depending on where one takes the ball. This use of space and motion I have yet to find in other interactive websites. Most interactive sites I have found have used very flat space, in other words, moving a ball from left to right, top to bottom, or vise versa, not through a space that has depth.
A common aspect I find with many websites is when I’m no longer navigating through a webpage the site seems to shut down. Things that were moving no longer move, objects that were flashing no longer flash. This I feel takes a lot of life out of the site making it less appealing. I loose interest and simply move on to something more stimulating. Ai Interactive’s site; however, keeps the page alive even when the user is no longer interacting with it. For example when one’s ball isn’t moving the site doesn’t lie still. The disks, which are the only components in this 3D space, slow down and float around the space. The slowing down of the disks doesn’t turn someone’s attention away from the page; rather it catches their attention even more.
The disks draw attention because as they slow down it becomes clearer that each disk has a label on it. These labels when clicked on produce a pop-up window at the bottom of the screen. Each pop-up window is a way to navigate further in to the site. For example, one of the disks labeled “Envy” brings a user to a website dedicated to the company EnvyNewMedia. One can choose to launch this site or continue navigating through Ai Interactive’s site. Another disk called “My Story,” brings the user to a page revealing the story of the creator and his life. Every disk provides different insight to the company in a very clever way.
I found it quite interesting that the site uses a window that I have never seen before. It acts as a magnifying glass so as one rolls over the center of the circle the image flexes toward the viewer making the image stretch. I’m not quite sure of the point it serves. It doesn’t make the image clearer or larger but it is a unique aspect of the site that I have never come across before.
The best aspect of this site is its creativity. I am familiar with sites that provide a generic navigation bar, simplistic ideas of navigation, limited interactivity, and very linear space. These sites are becoming dull and are fortunately pushing web developers to change their traditional practices of interactivity, navigation, and use of space and motion.
One thing I didn’t like about the site is that its purpose isn’t clear. These random disks are merely passing by and the only way one can get a sense of what the site is about is if they click on the labels. Even after one clicks on a label, the pop-up windows don’t give all that much information. Only until one launches the featured sites can the user really delve into the content and gain a sense of what the site is about. At this same time the lack of information on the beginning page creates curiosity which alone can coerce the user to look further into the content. Therefore the amount of penetration into the site depends on the user’s curiosity in the mysterious disks flying in and out of space which can be good or bad.
I never envisioned a web site to behave or possess the unique features of Ai Interactive’s site. Its use of space, motion, and interactivity are engaging and innovative. It is an impressive site that pushes the norm of interactive web capabilities. It has left me very curious of the future possibilities websites will have.
Check out this page: http://www.a-i.tw/root.html?lang=en
When I first came upon the website it wasn’t clear what I was going to find, but the site begins by giving instructions telling the user how to interact with the site. It starts with a pink ball which has a pop up window to the top of it saying “Drag the ball to change view angles.” As you move the ball around, one can travel through a seemingly 3 dimensional space. Things are moving past, around, and away from the user, etc., all depending on where one takes the ball. This use of space and motion I have yet to find in other interactive websites. Most interactive sites I have found have used very flat space, in other words, moving a ball from left to right, top to bottom, or vise versa, not through a space that has depth.
A common aspect I find with many websites is when I’m no longer navigating through a webpage the site seems to shut down. Things that were moving no longer move, objects that were flashing no longer flash. This I feel takes a lot of life out of the site making it less appealing. I loose interest and simply move on to something more stimulating. Ai Interactive’s site; however, keeps the page alive even when the user is no longer interacting with it. For example when one’s ball isn’t moving the site doesn’t lie still. The disks, which are the only components in this 3D space, slow down and float around the space. The slowing down of the disks doesn’t turn someone’s attention away from the page; rather it catches their attention even more.
The disks draw attention because as they slow down it becomes clearer that each disk has a label on it. These labels when clicked on produce a pop-up window at the bottom of the screen. Each pop-up window is a way to navigate further in to the site. For example, one of the disks labeled “Envy” brings a user to a website dedicated to the company EnvyNewMedia. One can choose to launch this site or continue navigating through Ai Interactive’s site. Another disk called “My Story,” brings the user to a page revealing the story of the creator and his life. Every disk provides different insight to the company in a very clever way.
I found it quite interesting that the site uses a window that I have never seen before. It acts as a magnifying glass so as one rolls over the center of the circle the image flexes toward the viewer making the image stretch. I’m not quite sure of the point it serves. It doesn’t make the image clearer or larger but it is a unique aspect of the site that I have never come across before.
The best aspect of this site is its creativity. I am familiar with sites that provide a generic navigation bar, simplistic ideas of navigation, limited interactivity, and very linear space. These sites are becoming dull and are fortunately pushing web developers to change their traditional practices of interactivity, navigation, and use of space and motion.
One thing I didn’t like about the site is that its purpose isn’t clear. These random disks are merely passing by and the only way one can get a sense of what the site is about is if they click on the labels. Even after one clicks on a label, the pop-up windows don’t give all that much information. Only until one launches the featured sites can the user really delve into the content and gain a sense of what the site is about. At this same time the lack of information on the beginning page creates curiosity which alone can coerce the user to look further into the content. Therefore the amount of penetration into the site depends on the user’s curiosity in the mysterious disks flying in and out of space which can be good or bad.
I never envisioned a web site to behave or possess the unique features of Ai Interactive’s site. Its use of space, motion, and interactivity are engaging and innovative. It is an impressive site that pushes the norm of interactive web capabilities. It has left me very curious of the future possibilities websites will have.
Check out this page: http://www.a-i.tw/root.html?lang=en
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Geekapedia: Pandora
Pandora is a music recommendation site that is completely different. Unlike sites like Last.fm and iTunes, Pandora does not use a collaborative filtering algorithm. These site tell you what people who like your favorite songs also listen to. Instead, Pandora breaks songs into basic elements like tempo, instrumentality, tone, and type of vocals to play you songs with similar elements. This breaks the boundaries of what genre a band is supposed to be, so the results are often surprising.
Pandora is part of the Music Genome Project. Founders of the site divide songs into hundreds of musical attributes much like the Human Genome Project divides the DNA sequence into many genes. The goal is to capture the musical identity of a song based on these “genes” and find songs with similar components. It disregards the band’s image, genre, and who buys the record, and only focuses on what each song sounds like.
Since Pandora started in 2000, thousands of songs have been sequenced. Even some of the obscure bands that I am fond of are on there, which I find very refreshing. So how does it work? You just type in the name of an artist, song, or band, and it will play a song that is iconic to that band (or the song you actually type in). From there, it begins to play songs similar, and you vote whether you like it or do not want to hear it again. You can even decide a song is overplayed and tell it not to play for a month, or add qualities from a different band to the station. What is created is a totally unique radio station on your computer.
Unfortunately, you cannot take this station and play it in your home or your car unless you pay a $36 per month fee. Is it worth it? You decide.
Pandora is part of the Music Genome Project. Founders of the site divide songs into hundreds of musical attributes much like the Human Genome Project divides the DNA sequence into many genes. The goal is to capture the musical identity of a song based on these “genes” and find songs with similar components. It disregards the band’s image, genre, and who buys the record, and only focuses on what each song sounds like.
Since Pandora started in 2000, thousands of songs have been sequenced. Even some of the obscure bands that I am fond of are on there, which I find very refreshing. So how does it work? You just type in the name of an artist, song, or band, and it will play a song that is iconic to that band (or the song you actually type in). From there, it begins to play songs similar, and you vote whether you like it or do not want to hear it again. You can even decide a song is overplayed and tell it not to play for a month, or add qualities from a different band to the station. What is created is a totally unique radio station on your computer.
Unfortunately, you cannot take this station and play it in your home or your car unless you pay a $36 per month fee. Is it worth it? You decide.
Article Review: Eye-Fi
“Eye-Fi: How One Little Chip Will Change the Way You Share Pictures”
WIRED magazine, 11/9/07
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2007/11/eyefi
Eye-Fi is a new company that makes Wi-Fi memory cards for cameras. This enables users to automatically route photos to their hard drive or to photo vendors like Facebook or Flikr.
This product is extremely innovative and useful. Photos the world over are trapped inside of people’s cameras because of the chore of uploading them. Then many never make it online because it is a multi-step process: plug in the camera, upload the pictures to the hard drive, filter through the pictures, and manually upload them to the web. The card’s software even handles scaling and compression. As for filtering through the pictures, privacy settings on the sites can even help with this.
So why haven’t we seen anything like this sooner? Eye-Fi was the first to create a Wi-Fi-equipped memory card because many of the large companies like Kodak and San Disk focus solely on hardware and not software. Eye-Fi was able to assemble the necessary people involved because the company was focused solely around the idea of producing a Wi-Fi chip. Camera producers like Nikon and Canon have played around with the idea, but their solutions locked users to one photo platform for uploads. Users wanted more freedom.
Eye-Fi has been working on creating this chip for two and a half years. They’ve produced a 2-GB SD wireless memory card. The user just needs to sync the card to a hard drive or Wi-Fi network, and all the work is done for him. Eye-Fi also pioneers on listening to customers. Anyone can log onto eye.fi.com to suggest additional photo platforms.
Because of the integration of technology, IDC analyst Jonathon Gaw anticipates that more devices will soon network via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. As for Eye-Fi, CEO Yuval Koren cryptically tells readers, “’There’s a lot more that we have in mind. Keep following what we’re doing.’”
I think that this is a remarkable idea. I can never find my cord to upload my pictures and even when I do upload them, I hardly ever post them online just because it is such a hassle. This could enable me to upload and share more pictures and would save a lot of time. I might even take my camera more places and take more pictures with this much work eliminated. However, I would still want to be able to edit a lot of my pictures so loading them directly online would not be for me. I also think that it would take up a lot of memory on your computer and website if all the pictures you took were uploaded. Many pictures that the average person takes end up being deleted. How is this worked out?
Another problem is the range of the Wi-Fi. If you are in a remote area or overseas, what happens to your uploads? Can you still upload manually if need be? Different countries also have different band frequencies, which could cause a problem.
Overall, I think it’s a very interesting and useful technology, but not something I would purchase until it becomes more widespread. Cost and logistics uploading would be issues for me, and I don’t think these have been brought into light yet since the concept is so new.
WIRED magazine, 11/9/07
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2007/11/eyefi
Eye-Fi is a new company that makes Wi-Fi memory cards for cameras. This enables users to automatically route photos to their hard drive or to photo vendors like Facebook or Flikr.
This product is extremely innovative and useful. Photos the world over are trapped inside of people’s cameras because of the chore of uploading them. Then many never make it online because it is a multi-step process: plug in the camera, upload the pictures to the hard drive, filter through the pictures, and manually upload them to the web. The card’s software even handles scaling and compression. As for filtering through the pictures, privacy settings on the sites can even help with this.
So why haven’t we seen anything like this sooner? Eye-Fi was the first to create a Wi-Fi-equipped memory card because many of the large companies like Kodak and San Disk focus solely on hardware and not software. Eye-Fi was able to assemble the necessary people involved because the company was focused solely around the idea of producing a Wi-Fi chip. Camera producers like Nikon and Canon have played around with the idea, but their solutions locked users to one photo platform for uploads. Users wanted more freedom.
Eye-Fi has been working on creating this chip for two and a half years. They’ve produced a 2-GB SD wireless memory card. The user just needs to sync the card to a hard drive or Wi-Fi network, and all the work is done for him. Eye-Fi also pioneers on listening to customers. Anyone can log onto eye.fi.com to suggest additional photo platforms.
Because of the integration of technology, IDC analyst Jonathon Gaw anticipates that more devices will soon network via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. As for Eye-Fi, CEO Yuval Koren cryptically tells readers, “’There’s a lot more that we have in mind. Keep following what we’re doing.’”
I think that this is a remarkable idea. I can never find my cord to upload my pictures and even when I do upload them, I hardly ever post them online just because it is such a hassle. This could enable me to upload and share more pictures and would save a lot of time. I might even take my camera more places and take more pictures with this much work eliminated. However, I would still want to be able to edit a lot of my pictures so loading them directly online would not be for me. I also think that it would take up a lot of memory on your computer and website if all the pictures you took were uploaded. Many pictures that the average person takes end up being deleted. How is this worked out?
Another problem is the range of the Wi-Fi. If you are in a remote area or overseas, what happens to your uploads? Can you still upload manually if need be? Different countries also have different band frequencies, which could cause a problem.
Overall, I think it’s a very interesting and useful technology, but not something I would purchase until it becomes more widespread. Cost and logistics uploading would be issues for me, and I don’t think these have been brought into light yet since the concept is so new.
3-D Printers
3-D Printers Redefine Industrial Design
Article by: Bryan Gardiner
I came across this article on Geekipedia, I had never heard of a 3-D Printer before so I thought I would do a little investigating. After reading the article I’ve decided I want one for myself, although I won’t be able to afford one anytime soon because they are rather pricey. For anyone who was like me and didn’t know about 3-D printers I’ll give a little description.
So basically a 3-D printer prints out models in 3-D. There are various kinds of 3-D printers that are capable of printing different materials. The feature printer that was discussed in the article is a printer from Frog Design; it is used for more traditional modeling purposes. The printer uses two materials: ABS (acryolintrile butadiene styrene) plastic and industrial-strength glue. The glue is what enables the machine to build hollow or concave objects without letting them collapse in on themselves. An example of using a 3-D printer in product design would be for the use of creating personal hearing aids;
“They stick some clay in your ear, it takes the shape of your ear, then they 3-D laser scan that and it gets fabricated by a 3-D printer, it’s kind of co-designed by your ear, by your personal geometry.”
Evolving technology has even generated 3-D printers that are capable of printing out fully functional finished products. In fact, battleships and aircraft carriers now make extensive us of selective laser sintering (SLS) printers. These printers are capable of “printing out” materials like titanium, cobalt chromium and polyamide. They actually use these printers to fabricate spare parts on the spot instead of carrying huge warehouses full of replacements.
3-D printers are a really great tool that can speed up production time, ultimately cutting costs for all sorts of products. My personal experience with creating 3-D projects is that for one I usually end up wasting a lot of material. I’ll come up with ideas in my head and decide upon materials, but often while I’m building the structure I come across technical problems with the design. By using a 3-D printer you can eliminate many of these problems before final production.
The craziest concept that I read about was that some manufacturers of 3-D printers even use their own products to create parts for the next generation of printers. In a way I think it’s a little scary that machines are able to build other machine. Although this fear could have to do with the fact that I watched the movie i-Robot last night. Convenience and efficiency are goals people strive to accomplish while creating new technology; the end result is easy living.
Article by: Bryan Gardiner
I came across this article on Geekipedia, I had never heard of a 3-D Printer before so I thought I would do a little investigating. After reading the article I’ve decided I want one for myself, although I won’t be able to afford one anytime soon because they are rather pricey. For anyone who was like me and didn’t know about 3-D printers I’ll give a little description.
So basically a 3-D printer prints out models in 3-D. There are various kinds of 3-D printers that are capable of printing different materials. The feature printer that was discussed in the article is a printer from Frog Design; it is used for more traditional modeling purposes. The printer uses two materials: ABS (acryolintrile butadiene styrene) plastic and industrial-strength glue. The glue is what enables the machine to build hollow or concave objects without letting them collapse in on themselves. An example of using a 3-D printer in product design would be for the use of creating personal hearing aids;
“They stick some clay in your ear, it takes the shape of your ear, then they 3-D laser scan that and it gets fabricated by a 3-D printer, it’s kind of co-designed by your ear, by your personal geometry.”
Evolving technology has even generated 3-D printers that are capable of printing out fully functional finished products. In fact, battleships and aircraft carriers now make extensive us of selective laser sintering (SLS) printers. These printers are capable of “printing out” materials like titanium, cobalt chromium and polyamide. They actually use these printers to fabricate spare parts on the spot instead of carrying huge warehouses full of replacements.
3-D printers are a really great tool that can speed up production time, ultimately cutting costs for all sorts of products. My personal experience with creating 3-D projects is that for one I usually end up wasting a lot of material. I’ll come up with ideas in my head and decide upon materials, but often while I’m building the structure I come across technical problems with the design. By using a 3-D printer you can eliminate many of these problems before final production.
The craziest concept that I read about was that some manufacturers of 3-D printers even use their own products to create parts for the next generation of printers. In a way I think it’s a little scary that machines are able to build other machine. Although this fear could have to do with the fact that I watched the movie i-Robot last night. Convenience and efficiency are goals people strive to accomplish while creating new technology; the end result is easy living.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Website Review: Don't Click it (it's long, sorry)
Review on www.dontclick.it
While I was trying to find a completely new and innovative website on the Internet to do my website review on, I stumbled upon a sight not coincidentally called, www.stumbleupon.com and looked under websites only to find the dontclick.it site. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t go to the dontclick.it site right away, and decided to see what was so great about this other websites. What I found was they had no cool flash intro that I had never see before, just good ideas or sites with crazy and cool information with only a mediocre site. It wasn’t until then, that I decided to click on the dontclick.it sight. I mean it had to be interesting considering it isn’t even a .com…right?
Wrong. It was beyond what I expected! At first it was a little confusing so I started shaking the mouse, which is what I would assume would be the normal reaction for anyone. Then I realized it, this website doesn’t require you click ANYTHING! You just slide the mouse over the webpage to find out information and navigate. It was fantastic. And although you would think it would be hard to get used to, I didn’t once hit a false click. It seemed so natural to me (which I think I’m going to give the dock on my Mac credit for that).
So how different is this website? Well besides the fact that you don’t have to click and wait anywhere from 3-30 seconds for a page to load, this page uses an entirely new type of graphical user interface (GUI). And because it is a website (and I am fortunate enough to be in a computer science class with web design) I also know that the page is made entirely out of Flash which is similar to AJAX (which is what is used for Google maps). These 2 technologies combined allow for a 98% seamless interaction and at most 5 seconds wait time for a page to load. The idea that www.dontclick.it is exemplifying reduces anticipation of the user, boredom from waiting, and no stress (the site tells you in its Body Ergonomy section that studies show that bad user interfaces, ie: run of the mill websites, cause stress because of boredom, and having to wait).
Although I was a little confused upon entering the sight, it didn’t take long for me to figure out how to navigate around it. After figuring out what the idea was behind this whole site being unclickable, it made me want to explore the entire site just to see how it worked and figure know where the idea came from and how it was achieved. The website provided me with more information than I expected and answered all my questions. It even entertained me with statistics that it provided and a 3 level game it has to test the user’s ability in just dragging the mouse as opposed to having to normally drag and click. I’m happy to brag that my first time doing the game I score on an ‘Intermediate’ level.
There was a plethora of information on the site that went along with promoting the non-clicking idea of a website that I didn’t even think of. It has a section that says how it is positive for your body; it has a history of computers and the idea of the mouse; there’s a page that has an idea for a product that will stop the user from clicking if necessary; there’s even a page that explains the number of ways a user can advance with obtaining new information from the flash rollover idea and actual “mouse recordings” of how random users interacted with the website on their first try! Talk about informative.
One of my favorite screens of information (besides the game) was the experiment screen. In this one, it has 4 different scenarios that load when you rollover a test tube and an illustration of a random scene will pop up. Once this happens, it is up to the user on how to navigate throughout the area to explore what will happen. For example, in the 4th experiment test tube, there is an area of a parking garage that loads and as you move the mouse arrow throughout the space, a new interactive and different animation occurs in the certain section you just passed through. I liked this one the best because there were certain areas where you could continue to change the picture and others where once it reached a certain point, it couldn’t change anymore. It really pushed the idea of the limits you can do with have an entire flash based website.
After further exploration of the site and realizing that there was no separate pages that went along with the main one, I needed to view the source of this page to see what kind of code went into making this. When I did this, I think realized a main global attribute was used. In computer science terms, this means that the site is linked to a separate one in order for it to work the way it does. So then is it technically a website? No. It isn’t. However, I was able to go through the couple lines of code and find the global attribute (real website) that dontclick.it was connected to. So then in a sense dontclick.it is not a sight, but rather an entity that was created through, http://dcit.lxfx.org. Once I went to the real website, I looked at the sources for a couple of the screens that would appear once you “moused” over them. When I did this, I realized that the whole site was written in a simple code, that I didn’t understand so I assumed it was flash, and I haven’t learned that yet.
After all my detective work on this simple yet amazing idea behind not having to click, and using nothing but flash to create a website, I realized that soon this will be the reality of all websites. Sure, you cannot get away with totally eliminating having to click buttons or links, but I feel that applying the rollover technique to the design of websites will be eminent because face it, the computer makes people lazy and the more we use it, the more we get annoyed with aspects of it that so long ago seemed to be so cutting edge. For example, wait time. We’re an impatient bunch of humans in the new technological world and have a ‘Nothing- but- rollover” website design would eliminate the most impatient of the crew. This would then make these impatient people extremely happy and we can move forward to an even faster type of navigating through a website, if it’s even possible.
With all my detective work on just how dontclick.it worked, I dug even further and decided it would be useful to read the copyright. I found out something even cooler once I read this! Even though this idea of having the entire site be rollovers was created in 2005, it was created by a student named Alex Frank for his senior project at the University of Essen- Duisburg in Germany. To find this out was pretty inspiring for me because I really enjoy web design and the work that goes into creating a new and cutting edge website. Plus, the man is German and he’s able to create a website that can be read across the Atlantic Ocean and still be able to understand the content and idea behind it. That’s talent and success in design if I’ve ever experienced it. If a student could think of this 2 years ago, imagine the possibilities that await with Flash. Not only that, but it also gives me incentive because this kid was able to do this for a senior project. He must have gotten a job right away just because of this project. I want to do that when the time comes. Hell, I want to be able to create a website that is just as amazing by the time I need to apply for an internship. I’m sure that will land me a pretty solid one.
-shannon
While I was trying to find a completely new and innovative website on the Internet to do my website review on, I stumbled upon a sight not coincidentally called, www.stumbleupon.com and looked under websites only to find the dontclick.it site. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t go to the dontclick.it site right away, and decided to see what was so great about this other websites. What I found was they had no cool flash intro that I had never see before, just good ideas or sites with crazy and cool information with only a mediocre site. It wasn’t until then, that I decided to click on the dontclick.it sight. I mean it had to be interesting considering it isn’t even a .com…right?
Wrong. It was beyond what I expected! At first it was a little confusing so I started shaking the mouse, which is what I would assume would be the normal reaction for anyone. Then I realized it, this website doesn’t require you click ANYTHING! You just slide the mouse over the webpage to find out information and navigate. It was fantastic. And although you would think it would be hard to get used to, I didn’t once hit a false click. It seemed so natural to me (which I think I’m going to give the dock on my Mac credit for that).
So how different is this website? Well besides the fact that you don’t have to click and wait anywhere from 3-30 seconds for a page to load, this page uses an entirely new type of graphical user interface (GUI). And because it is a website (and I am fortunate enough to be in a computer science class with web design) I also know that the page is made entirely out of Flash which is similar to AJAX (which is what is used for Google maps). These 2 technologies combined allow for a 98% seamless interaction and at most 5 seconds wait time for a page to load. The idea that www.dontclick.it is exemplifying reduces anticipation of the user, boredom from waiting, and no stress (the site tells you in its Body Ergonomy section that studies show that bad user interfaces, ie: run of the mill websites, cause stress because of boredom, and having to wait).
Although I was a little confused upon entering the sight, it didn’t take long for me to figure out how to navigate around it. After figuring out what the idea was behind this whole site being unclickable, it made me want to explore the entire site just to see how it worked and figure know where the idea came from and how it was achieved. The website provided me with more information than I expected and answered all my questions. It even entertained me with statistics that it provided and a 3 level game it has to test the user’s ability in just dragging the mouse as opposed to having to normally drag and click. I’m happy to brag that my first time doing the game I score on an ‘Intermediate’ level.
There was a plethora of information on the site that went along with promoting the non-clicking idea of a website that I didn’t even think of. It has a section that says how it is positive for your body; it has a history of computers and the idea of the mouse; there’s a page that has an idea for a product that will stop the user from clicking if necessary; there’s even a page that explains the number of ways a user can advance with obtaining new information from the flash rollover idea and actual “mouse recordings” of how random users interacted with the website on their first try! Talk about informative.
One of my favorite screens of information (besides the game) was the experiment screen. In this one, it has 4 different scenarios that load when you rollover a test tube and an illustration of a random scene will pop up. Once this happens, it is up to the user on how to navigate throughout the area to explore what will happen. For example, in the 4th experiment test tube, there is an area of a parking garage that loads and as you move the mouse arrow throughout the space, a new interactive and different animation occurs in the certain section you just passed through. I liked this one the best because there were certain areas where you could continue to change the picture and others where once it reached a certain point, it couldn’t change anymore. It really pushed the idea of the limits you can do with have an entire flash based website.
After further exploration of the site and realizing that there was no separate pages that went along with the main one, I needed to view the source of this page to see what kind of code went into making this. When I did this, I think realized a main global attribute was used. In computer science terms, this means that the site is linked to a separate one in order for it to work the way it does. So then is it technically a website? No. It isn’t. However, I was able to go through the couple lines of code and find the global attribute (real website) that dontclick.it was connected to. So then in a sense dontclick.it is not a sight, but rather an entity that was created through, http://dcit.lxfx.org. Once I went to the real website, I looked at the sources for a couple of the screens that would appear once you “moused” over them. When I did this, I realized that the whole site was written in a simple code, that I didn’t understand so I assumed it was flash, and I haven’t learned that yet.
After all my detective work on this simple yet amazing idea behind not having to click, and using nothing but flash to create a website, I realized that soon this will be the reality of all websites. Sure, you cannot get away with totally eliminating having to click buttons or links, but I feel that applying the rollover technique to the design of websites will be eminent because face it, the computer makes people lazy and the more we use it, the more we get annoyed with aspects of it that so long ago seemed to be so cutting edge. For example, wait time. We’re an impatient bunch of humans in the new technological world and have a ‘Nothing- but- rollover” website design would eliminate the most impatient of the crew. This would then make these impatient people extremely happy and we can move forward to an even faster type of navigating through a website, if it’s even possible.
With all my detective work on just how dontclick.it worked, I dug even further and decided it would be useful to read the copyright. I found out something even cooler once I read this! Even though this idea of having the entire site be rollovers was created in 2005, it was created by a student named Alex Frank for his senior project at the University of Essen- Duisburg in Germany. To find this out was pretty inspiring for me because I really enjoy web design and the work that goes into creating a new and cutting edge website. Plus, the man is German and he’s able to create a website that can be read across the Atlantic Ocean and still be able to understand the content and idea behind it. That’s talent and success in design if I’ve ever experienced it. If a student could think of this 2 years ago, imagine the possibilities that await with Flash. Not only that, but it also gives me incentive because this kid was able to do this for a senior project. He must have gotten a job right away just because of this project. I want to do that when the time comes. Hell, I want to be able to create a website that is just as amazing by the time I need to apply for an internship. I’m sure that will land me a pretty solid one.
-shannon
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