MeyerBros

The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. (or, mathmatically, MT = a + b log₂(2A/W + c))

I’ve been reading up on user interface design, and this stuff is fascinating. I’m finding it all through the humanized blog. i had been thinking that google calendars’ quick event entry system was brilliant and now i can explain it. it’s accessed by the fastest/largest target possible (wherever your mouse happens to be) and the options are severly limited for input. works great.

now do that for a wysiwig editor. (and what about that pie-chart menu idea? i think that’s swell and we should give it a try)

the other day i started teaching Michelle code, and from the start I went about it all wrong. “This is a DOM tree… This is a div tag…” i’m sorry. next time around i’m going to work on a new approach involving assignments layed out something like:

• draw your website using whatever medium you feel most comfortable in
• re-draw the same design using only straight lines and solid colors
• re-write the same design content using absolutely no graphics
• i haven’t worked this out entirely…

but really it just makes me want to build a better WYSIWYG editor that is actually user friendly following the philosophies of companies like humanized and 37 signals. An editor that doesn’t assume you want this to be a paragraph and that to be a line break, but makes symantics an intigrated part of the process, and naming and creating styles the easiest thing in the world. Something that treats you more like text edit and less like microsoft word. entirely unlike either dreamweaver or iweb. the one with too many buttons and lists and assumptions, the other with no option to even view the code. i want a program that will do it all for you, and teach you a new way of thinking all without breaking your train of thought. i think it’s possible and i think we should do it.