The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces

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24 pointsbreily8 comments

One ugly thing rarely mentioned about this "rise of contextual user interfaces" is the decline of providing alternatives for non-javascript users. Try disabling JS and clicking the contextual menu arrow at the book site mention in the article, http://www.shelfari.com.

Oh, don't have Javascript enabled?! Forget using all those convenient options! In fact, there's not much of anything you can do on the site w/o JS on and you can especially forget all the contextual menus, which do not seem to have non-JS counterparts at all!

This is an alarming trend, at least to me. Yes, there are times when you can make some convenience functionality in JS and not have to worry about when users don't have it on. But to base an entire menu structure on it, menus that can be accessed no other way? That's sort of a step backwards, isn't it?

They also kind of ripped off the bookshelf design from Delicious Library, but that's neither here nor there I suppose.

We're using context to have our UI focus on only what the user needs/wants at the time, but doing it primarily without JS currently. We've built in a lot of UI logic into rendering the html so that the page changes depending on the object being observed in the mode requested. It makes using the system so much easier.

This is pure ignorance on my part but why do you disable javascript? I can only think of two reasons: a) safety concerns and b) old browser. Both of these can be taken care of pretty easily. Are there other reasons?

Many lesser mobile browsers still have limited/no Javascript support. I know quite a few people who disable both JS and Flash because they don't want crazy crap flying around the screen and so forth. Some people are security nuts as well.

It's not a matter of coming up with a lot of reasons, though. The fact is that as a web developer, even today, we cannot safely assume that Javascript will be enabled or available. For some the need for JS far outweighs the consequences of not having it. Take for example an app suite like Zoho or Zimbra. However, even GMail has an HTML version.

Javascript also causes usability and accessibility concerns, especially for those using screen readers, CLI browsers (like lynx), and other non-typical devices to browse the web. There are countless books and essays and blog posts on the subject of Javascript's destruction of usability and accessibility when not used in a progressively-enhancing way.

Personally, I never disable Javascript. I disabled it on that site in order to confirm my suspicion that their entire navigation structure depends on it. However, I do recommend turning off Javascript for a day while browsing the web and visiting your favorite sites. It is truly an eye-opener.

I'm sure it's an eye-opener just as browsing with Netscape 4 would be, but I don't think it really means anything.

I gave up on caring about what a site does without JS a long time ago. It's not worth my time to do it just like it's not worth designing cars for people without legs.

Office is a completely different kind of application from iTunes and video players. The interface will therefore be different as well. Comparing a product 8 years old to something 8 months old isn't fair, anyway.

Plenty of Microsoft products support contextual user interfaces - all the windows and tabs in Visual Studio can be set to auto-hide and placed on the margins of the window so that mousing over them exposes them (like in IntelliJ IDEA). It works especially well for doing demos and working on low-resolution displays like laptops, but I use it that way anyway because I love the relatively minimalist feel it has (I disable the menu bar, scroll bar, and tool bar in Emacs, too).

Beyond that, observing that Apple pays more attention to the user interface than Microsoft is trite.

Amazing how the craptacular iTunes is used as an example of a 'good' UI from Apple. Apple makes some great UI's and software, iTunes is not one of them.

How so? I've read some people saying that itunes is crap but have never found a software that was this convenient for managing my music.... So care to explain more in details why you think it's crap? And what other software you would recommend me?

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