Where to Locate the UI
An operating system doesn’t necessarily have to have a user interface; the UI can be provided by a completely separate piece of software. This is pretty well illustrated by the variety of window managers available in Linux; if you want your Linux system to look and feel like Windows, or NextStep, or MacOS, or something different from any of those, you just choose the window manager you want.
Not to get into a too-technical discussion of this, in a metaphorical sense a web browser is like an operating system, and the sites you load are like applications. Different browsers such as IE, Firefox, and Safari provide different degrees to which the content can provide the UI. And also provide different means to do so, which is an ongoing annoyance to web developers.
Mobile browsers, including ours, have lagged behind the desktop in enabling the content to provide the UI. Today you can create a web page that turns off our mouse pointer, but you can’t control the options menu, softkeys, or status indicators to any reasonable extent. Here’s a modest proposal, which is really just a thought experiment: maybe the content should be able to control a great deal more of the UI. I’m working up some samples of what that might be like.
Be careful with this. Many users will probably expect certain potentially configurable options to be consistent between sites. Breaking that could probably lead to confusion.
Exciting idea!
However, can you please ellaborate, how is your proposal different from creating a brand new Flash UI in a website? Couldn’t those utilize ~ control those soft buttons?
I havent’s seen your Flashlite 3 enabled browser in action yet (you only gave ot for the N95 8GB yet)- oh I wish I could on my E70 at 50% zoom that must be a sight at the resolution of 416×352! - but I am guessing that loading one of those Flash games on a website could enable the buttons you talked about… Or if not, on a full QWERTY phone there are enough buttons for the Flash application.
Do you also mean that the loaded site would be able to controll local resources too, in other words, could “work” the local operating system?
Do you mean, that e.g.: opening ms.com could recognize that now is the time to run a virtual windows on the poor unsuspecting S60 phone and the the little green start button would appear in the bottom left corner and clicking on it - or pushing the newly transformed left soft key = “windows logo button” - would provide a path to the local image gallery also?
Regards!
Aron
Aron, it’s not really a proposal, exactly — just an idea that arose out of a conversation. It would differ from a flash site because the content could change the browser’s UI outside the content area. For example, it could eliminate everything in the Options menu except “Exit”, and include “Post Comments” or something like that. Not necessarily a good idea, just an idea. We’re nowhere near considering anything that raises security issues to this extent, by the way!