Powered By One .com

We now have with the internet with all of the information we could ever want. More information is not what we crave, what we need a better way of viewing that information. It is starting to become more organize, but the methods the websites are using are still subpar. Information is starting to become more organized and gather in more unified places and this is good, but they are still using the same old methods of displaying that information. The information needs to be displayed in an innovative fashion, where the lots info is readily available without overwhelming the user or being convoluted. Wikipedia is an example of a lot of info that is organized but is still old and archaic method of displaying info, though their focal point is that info comes from the users and this may be a new method but still primitive result.

Video games have interface designers find themselves at the forefront of cutting edge interface ideas, with their needing to convey as much info as possible, while keeping the interface out of the way, while the user plays the game. They do this by one time familiarizing you with icons, often trickling in there relevance one by one, then reusing them in a branded and logical fashion. The user understands exactly what all of the icons mean. You can sit anyone in front of a video game interface and ask them to read off information if you were to write it down in flat text from anyone video game interface you would take down pages of text I.E. "I am shooting 3 round burst, I have 10 bullets left, 3 clips of 30 bullets each." Websites don't need direct video game type interfaces they just need to adapt the working methods. It doesn't take a genius to do this, just some logical thinking. We need to stop thinking that we can only do what has been done before, I constantly see the same methods applied over and over (ineffective) we need to understand that technology knows no bounds, we are not even limited by programming technology, hardware technology, or users browsing at the end, we are only limited by the imagination of those building the websites, which is a sad thought.

An important method that needs to be taken is to condense large amounts of data in small areas using AJAX methods to expand more info into the same area; this can be done by using mouse over effects to bring more info to the screen. A website should feel free to use its exclusive jargon as much as possible and define the jargon in mouse over text boxes as to rapidly familiarize the user with the methods of that website; this increases the flow of the website. We should not cater to the unfamiliar in anything but mouse over, thus meaning once the user is familiar, the user can move rapidly through the site and does not need to use the mouse over feature and no information gets in the way. We've been using these tooltip methods in application development for a long time, the technology for mouse over effect have been available in websites for a long time, but only now are we starting seeing it bridged together. I am NOT referring to the invasive methods that IntelliTXT / Vibrant uses, this is invasive and annoying. I do not understand why developers aren't pushing these methods into existing websites. It's time for a new age of web, the users have had no problem in thinking outside the box, only those delivering the content have had limited imaginations. We should not be so foolish to think that data should remain in one format, just because a thread on a forum starts as a thread doesn't mean it can't turn into a wiki.