S60 Open to new features

Do you ever click on an item in a piece of software (any software, from an OS to an application) and find that the program doesn't respond as you expect? This happens to me all the time, particularly when I have my "UI Designer" hat on (yes, it has a little helicopter rotor on the top) and I'm thinking about how actions and interface objects should be consistent. (No, I'm not posting a photo of me wearing this hat).

If I'm not paying careful attention to very subtle contextual cues about interface objects in Windows, for example, I'm likely to click one time when I should click twice, and vice versa. Using MacOS X is a little bit better, but still tends to be inconsistent about how those little pictures on my screen behave. In Linux, the KDE and Gnome user interfaces are on the same level -- maybe a bit more inconsistent, but I'm not doing a formal study.

S60 has at least as many inconsistencies; maybe more. And with a sparser set of contextual cues, it keeps some of this information more of a "secret" than most desktop UI environments. A mobile system doesn't necessarily have fewer contextual cues or less consistency; that's just the way S60 is at its current stage of development.

Lately I expect an interface I'm using to conform to the underlying user model of the web. Click once to make things work; content usually extends beyond the viewing area and is easily accessible, the semantic portion of the content is distinct from the semiotic portion. (OK, even I don't know what that last sentence means -- my point is simply that you can make the window a different size and shape, or change magnification, and the text you're reading is adapted to those changes. It's just that I've been waiting to use "semantic" and "semiotic" in the same sentence since university. Is it a good thing that my life goals can be so easily accomplished?)

Using a browser is refreshingly simple and easy, and the smaller set of available interactions generally work fine. I'm writing this post in an HTML text entry field -- it's very much like NotePad, but it works just fine. I use text entry fields for a great deal of writing now; I could fire up Word, or for that matter a supercharged XML or SGML editor if I wanted to, but...well, I don't; anything else doesn't make the writing any better (sorry) and just gets in the way.

I also manage the file system of my (miserable excuse for a) website using HTML forms. Same controls I use to pay bills, order books, record events in my calendar, and set up and manage both routers and servers.

Maybe it's self-serving for a browser designer to say this, but the faster we bring the web user model to as many software interfaces as possible, the easier the software is going to be for users.