[CLUE-Talk] Books on software usability

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 04-22 11:08, jbrockmeier at earthlink.net wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Chris K. Chew wrote:
<snip>
> I have a choice about buying things from Best Buy online or not. But
> if I want to pay my phone bill online, I have no choice - and Qwest's
> site is dicey at best in a Linux browser. AT&T's site depends on 
> Flash as well. Finally, it's just damned annoying to want to get 
> some information and not be able to view it because it's designed
> for Exploder or in Flash or some other God-awful technology. It's
> my right as a customer or potential customer to complain about
> a poor service just as much as it is to not do business with them
> at all - so I'm not going to stop complaining about sites that
> break in Linux browsers and I'm not going to just shrug my shoulders
> and accept that that's the way things are. Sorry, that's not
> the solution. 

Speaking of AT&T, they send their bill and customer updates out in HTML-only
(I'm talking about AT&T broadband internet here)!! I've asked for text-only,
but apparently, that's not an option.  Not really the "web", but it is part
of the relationship that an online company is building with customers - and
I think it's a bad one. I use Mutt, and viewing HTML emails is not pleasant.
I know there is some kind of support for it in Mutt, but I don't want to
bother with figuring it out just because the monopoly on broadband in my
area insists on a certain format for emails. Why is sending pure text so
darned hard for AT&T to grock?

On the Flash issue:

While I think for creating real "applications", the current method of HTML
(and the grab-bag of acronyms) that currently makes up the web falls short of
the power that client-server technology offered, a proprietary solution is
no way to go...and Flash doesn't really address the real problems, anyway. I
think I remembered a story on Slashdot or elsewhere* about M$ rep saying Web
is seriously broken - and for some applications, I couldn't agree more...I
just hope that the consortium mentioned in said reading comes up with
something truly open and workable...something that will truly be the next
level of the internet.  Something really worthwhile, too, not something that
promises a bunch of PHB-compliant nonsense, and delivers little to no real
benefit for the majority of web "experiences" - remember the buzz about
Javascript, Java applets, "push technology", VBScript, or even, XML? I
suspect a lot of the hype about .NET and web services in general may end up
the same way. 

*Sorry, couldn't find that article that I'm thinking of.

Cheers,

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at attbi.com Yahoo:seanleblancathome 
ICQ:138565743 MSN:seanleblancathome AIM:sleblancathome 
Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out. 
-Italian Proverb