Re: Re: iPhone and Shadow

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008, Peggy Hanton wrote:

# I agree.  The new gadgets and applications have a lot of eye appeal.  Really
# cool.
# 
# I looked at Things and it is really nice, but there is no hierarchy in the
# projects.  I understand that development for Things is still happening, but
# hierarchy doesn¹t seem to be on the list.
# OmniFocus seemed very rigid ‹ fine if you only want to do things the way
# they are set up.
# 
# So, for now I¹ll stick with Plain-Jane Shadow that does exactly what I need
# it to do.  

	It is a difficult problem, designing these things in the 
environment there..

	ie: Shadow is a highly generalized app, with a lot of precision 
convenience functions, but avoiding hard coded 'voodoo behind the scenes' 
behaviours; ie: Rather than have one function that does 5 things, I'd try 
to give you those 5 things, and group themso they could work in a row 
relatively quick; this is a more general approach, but often makes things 
more complicated. Hence Shadows 'power user' approach.. try to be simple, 
but pack a lot of options for those who want them.. never limit, but 
enable... and well, since Shadow evolved ove years, its a little on the 
cluttery side (hard to keep adding features, without taking away ore 
redoing old ones and annoying people, etc..)

	So in this new space.. do you rule out or embrace all the new 
rages such as location based awareness, including photos in everything, 
and all that flashy stuff? 

	iPhone/Touch tends to not like hierarchy.. they want simple lists 
for big fat fingers, and sometimes if you tap on one it'll slide over to 
show you another flat list that is conceptually 'within' the previous one. 
Thats a hierarchy of sorts.. because the touchscreen is not so precise for 
a lot of packed in data.

	ie: How would you represent, on the iWhatever:

A
.	B
.	.	C

	If you want to, like a traditional PDA app, show it all on one 
screen thaqts fine... but you'd have to go to a smaller font maybe and 
iWhatever encourages big friendly smoothed fonts. Also, showing all those 
columns is hard ot fit on a thin screen with large fonts, and of course 
they want the preference panel about sorts and such in the general 
preference system, not somethign you change live by tapping on column 
heads like we're used to..

	Etc and etc in every way.

	Hence, iWhatever apps, the best of them, are total rethinks; 
coming at problems in a different angle. Perhaps more problem domain 
specific so they can get away with it.

	A really general program might be hard to fit into this new UI 
style; certaily it is hard for a lot of developers.

	Anyway, lots of blue sky and forward thinking to do, just to nail 
down.. where od we think we need to go, what sorts of users and uses on 
that device, how much multimedia, etc. (Consider, GPS could auto-determine 
your locale context.. you could have 'things to see while at work' that 
auto show when you _get_ there, and so on. Fun, or just too much voodoo? 
Touch choices :)

		jeff


--
If everyone would put barbecue sauce on their food, there would be no war.

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