504West – Programming and Design

I bet within a 2 years the common “start menu” will die.

Modern touchscreen devices including iPads and iPhones and Xooms are all saying the same thing: No! We don’t need no taskbar!

Let’s examine the iPhone4.

Do you see a start menu anywhere? No.

Do we need to have one? No.

It doesn’t make sense to have one. It just makes sense to push or “tap” on a icon to run an application. Android and iOS have gone this direction with good reason.

Now let’s chat about the Desktop OS.

The Start Menu and Taskbar in Microsoft Windows basically hasn’t changed since the mid 90′s.

Let’s take a look.

The Windows 95 Start Menu. Everyone remembers the good old days.

Everything is hidden underneath this first layer of the menu. EVERY program is hidden. Why do we need to hide anything?

Also, everything is organize by either a document or a program. Pointless.

Fast forward to 2011.

Windows 7 Start menu. Microsoft decided to hide the programs and show the most commonly used ones here. Still the same basic premise as Windows 95: shutdown, control panel, and a list of programs… Lists full of lists and everything is buried.

The best thing here is the search bar that is built in. It really works well. But why should we have to search for a program to use? Shouldn’t it be easy to find an app?

Any program on the computer should be one, at most 2 clicks away! Not buried 3 levels deep in an out-dated menu system.

The start menu has two major downfalls: It requires the use of a mouse and programs are buried way too deep within it.Try using the start menu with only a keyboard. It’s horrible.

In order for me to open the calculator program or defrag I have to click on the start button click on “all programs”, find accessories and then go to system tools and then click on the program I want. This is way too difficult and inefficient.

What’s the solution?

Drop the start menu entirely and use “home screens” like Android and iOS. Make some “default” home screens and let the user customize the rest.

There can a “System” home screen with all the system tools you would need. A “Documents” home screen can hold documents and folders. Music, Websites, Videos, anything could have its’ own home screen. There could even be a facebook home screen.

I just finished up new website for Angela of space & time consulting of Cambridge, Mass.

The site turned out great and has received lots of positive feedback.

Congrats Angela.

With modern hardware like multi-touch pads and hand gestures do browsers need scrollbars?

Especially on computers with the multi-touch pad you can scroll down pages with a extremely intuitive two-fingers-swipe. Why would I want to click on a scrollbar and then drag it down? Horizontal scrolling is the same way too. Using them is a pain, they get in the way, and they are slow to use.

The computer mouse has the track wheel or something like it to help out too. Most modern mice now are multi-touch too. Why do we need to have the scrollbar?

Can we at least have the ability to hide or turn off the scrollbar?

What do you think?

I guess this is it. I’ve started my programming blog. My name is David Barber and I am Software Developer and Designer.

If you are interested in web development, design or pretty much anything related this is a good blog to read.

I plan on writing short posts. Thanks for reading.