Why YouOS et al Are Screwed

designedexperience.blogspot.com

17 points·blader··9 comments

I kind of agree with what I think rms is saying:

YouOS (in particular) seems to be barking up the wrong tree by simply emulating a desktop-style environment in a web browser. The web has shown us that there are much more sophisticated and intuitive ways of organizing the display of (and interaction with) several applications at the same time. All of the crufty GUI just makes the experience worse...

I agree, and YouOS isn't alone in this. Emulation of the desktop style environment practically defines the WebOS space. In my opinion, it adds no value at all.

Exactly. The best of the Web OS's is Goowy because they're trying something different. Glide is trying something different too but I don't like their GUI.

Going back to blader's post, a Web OS has to help organize information. Ajax start pages are better web operating systems already than YouOS and the like because they function like a better version of bookmarks.

The trick is going to be combining Netvibes with Meebo and making a full screen web browser function effectively as the entire desktop environment.

YouOS et al miss that a complete Web Desktop Environment can make computing fundamentally easier for people uncomfortable using Windows computers by eliminating all the useless futures of modern OS's that interfere with performing useful tasks.

Sounds like a perfect example of the Inner-platform effect: http://www.answers.com/topic/inner-platform-effect

Now I know what to call it. Thanks!

Excuse the tone, I was cranky when writing.

Not at all; I didn't find it amiss. The tone was similar to jwz on Groupware: http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

chrome://browser/content/browser.xul (Firefox Only) ^ This is funny if you've read the post ...

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