Well, Internet Explorer 8 is in the beta phase only, so it may be to early to judge it and make any conclusion. Anyway, I have some thoughts I want to share.

I’ve been a long time Firefox user, even though I cannot say anything bad about IE, unlike some other people who always tend to whine about it, I was just used to Firefox, anyway, I decided to try IE 8 Beta 1 and now I’m using Beta 2. It looked very promising to me. It passed the Acid2 Test, it has the Developers Tools and a built-in JavaScript debugger. So, Microsoft intends to release a more developer oriented browser that may surprise many web developers who have a bad opinion about Microsoft as a company that produced a very crappy browser and simply don’t care much about web standards and web at all. It’s not right, of course.

Anyway, this time I’m going to talk about features that are oriented not only for developers but for everybody. And Internet Explorer 8 has something to offer, starting from Web Slices, Accelerators that allow you to get content without loading a new page, for instance, you can easily look up a word in a dictionary or find a place on the map

and InPrivate browsing. But I as a Firefox user was surprised that IE lacked some essential features, at least I got used to them when using Firefox. For example, I cannot simply copy an e-mail address, in Firefox I would right-click on the e-mail and choose “Copy Email Address”, in IE8 I can only copy the full address beginning with “mailto:”. Then, I cannot just copy the URL of a picture,

 

instead I have to go to “Properties”, select its address and then copy.

       

 

Brrr… That’s nasty. I believe there are some other things that drive me crazy, but at the moment I can’t remember them.

Yep, I have just remembered yet another glitch, middle-click that should open a page in a new tab doesn’t work when I open page from the favourites menu…

Moreover, there are the developer tools, a JavaScript debugger, a good source viewer, but there’s no shortcut for source viewing, in Firefox I would simply press CTRL+U, in IE I’m constantly hitting the same combination and realize that I have to right-click and choose “View source”.

Well, these things are just minors glitches, but I think these minor things are very important. If one is used to the same set of convenient features in one browser, then it’s a good idea to implement them in another. I hope, the final version of Internet Explorer 8 will have great usability and it will a really great browser that everyone will enjoy :-)!

Do you remember your first experience of using a computer? It doesn’t matter whether it was DOS with Norton Commander or Windows. Anyway you had to learn how to find the necessary applications, how to execute them, once again it doesn’t matter whether you clicked on the folders and files on the blue background or used the Start menu. It’s important that you learnt the definitions or metaphors; you learnt that icon is an application or something else; you learnt that you have to click twice on it to open it and so on.

Having got used to those metaphors, we easily use a computer unless we face an application with a non-standard interface that confuses us because we have to learn again.

The same thing applies to web sites as well, if a website has a non-standard navigaton it confuses us, even though its navigation is convenient, but not standard.

As a result the developers have to create user interfaces within the standard paradigm, it is right though, because we don’t have to learn everytime we run a new application. So we can divide all the UI’s into two types:

• Standard
• Bad

That is a problem in fact - we cannot go beyond the limits of the paradigm, because user interfaces are created by the people who are used to the standard paradigm. But the fact that we are used to something doesn’t mean that it’s the best thing ever, we just haven’t seen a better thing probably.

These things stroke my mind when I heard a dialogue in a computer store between two girls who were looking for a portable music player and a salesman. They got frustrated when the salesman told them that they needed a program to upload music to the player. Even though the program is shipped with the player they were still confused. They just didn’t understand that, but that was clear for me, it was clear for the salesman because we were used to the fact that we needed an application to upload music to the player. But those girls didn’t think within that paradigm.

That is why it’s worth goin beyond the standards of the created paradigm. I think it’s worth doing that, simply because it will help us to learn new ways of creating UI. Probably it’s worth consulting with complete newbies who can offer something new – a better way of interaction between people and computers.

I was in the store the other day paying for my mobile phone. There was a middle-aged woman in front of me who was trying to pay for her mobile phone with the payment machine. This payment machine was recently installed, so it was difficult for some people to get used to it. Even I saw the machine for the first time. Anyway that woman was nervously trying to pay, however she even couldn’t go further than entering her phone number, since I hadn’t any experience with that machine as well, I advised her to read the manual that was under the button in the bottom of the screen. She got angry when she heard my advice. Then I noticed that she just didn’t fill in the region code, I told her about that, she didn’t listen, got angry and went away.

That was a good example of the "paradox of the active user" stating that users never read manuals, instead they just start using the thing (software or hardware) immediately.  Even though they are having problems with that thing they still refuse to read any manuals.

That’s the important thing that should be kept in mind when desiging any kind of user interfaces, from a desktop application to a website.  The UI must be self explanatory; there shouldn’t be any need for reading manuals.