More on Content-Owning UI
My last post touched on the idea of the content owning the UI. Now, some of that is already possible; web pages can control a great deal of the UI you see when you load the page. If a page uses Java, Flash, or Javascript this can go pretty far, but even if you limit yourself to XHTML and CSS you can do a lot.
I was about to say “but that’s not the part of the UI I meant”, but that begs the question of whether the user experience of using a web page on a mobile device can be meaningfully parsed into a UI that has qualitatively different categories. Different “parts”, so to speak. I think it has three: system UI, application UI, and content UI.
In the desktop/laptop world graphic design is used to keep these kinds of functions distinct. Functions are placed in different locations in an attempt to show both similarity between items in one area, and differences among groups of items. I’m not sure this approach still works particularly well after nearly three decades, but it’s firmly in place.
In S60 we still have the same three categories of functions, but we can’t rely on graphic location to distinguish them. Not until we have considerably larger displays, at least. So we rely a little bit on location, a little bit on the process you follow to get to a location, and a little bit on each of several other guideposts: labeling, appearance, order, and so on. Of course there might be those who point out that in S60 we distinguish categories of functions by A. “can usually be found”, B. “can occasionally be figured out”, and C. “if you find this by accident don’t think you’ll ever find out how” — but I digress.
Web content already owns a fair amount of the “content” category of UI. There are some serious security concerns about opening up the “system” category of UI to web content. The interesting — and, I think reasonable — area to consider is “application UI”.
In S60, “application UI” includes things like what you see in the Options menu, whether there even is an Options menu, how you can manipulate your view of the content (zooming, panning, scrolling, etc.) and things like that. That’s the category of UI that I think can be considered as reasonable candidates for content-control. Not every website would assume such control — not every site uses Javascript or CSS, either. But those that do can provide a pretty compelling experience.
Hello Pete,
I think you have a strong point. While I would prefer as close as possible PC-like experience I agree that it could be difficult to accomplish from the “graphical UI level separation” perspective on the small screen as you suggested.
However I think it is not an impossible task and it is certainly on the shoulder of S60 “system designers”, and not the Browser team.
Regarding web pages taking controll of the browser UI, it sounds cool, but I would prefer maybe content dependent application UI in the sense that if there are different objects on the page the “conforming menu” would include what to o with those different objects. E.g.: if there is a (or more) Flash embeded video, the menu could offer saving them instead of watching them. Probably that should be possible by pointing at the objects and manipulate them locally, but the “morphing menu” could provide “shortcuts” to such functionality.
Thanks for that interesting thought provoking point…
Best Regards!
Aron