Why, Blog, Why?

I was a bit shocked today to land on an Amazon.com product page and not recognize their new layout. Gone are the ubiquitous "tabs". Here's what I sent to them via their feedback form. (See the Functioning Form blog for a history of Amazon.com designs, including the new tab-less design.)

Every web design book that I've come across uses the Amazon "Tabbed Interface" as an example of "what works". It's ubiquitous as a design element that is simple, useful and compact. Certainly it has its limits as tabs are added (My Firefox browser is averaging upwards of 30 tabs and its difficult to wade through), but I would certainly argue that tabs are more user friendly than drop down lists (specifically non-UI-native, script based [JavaScript/CSS/whatever] drop-down lists) which are not always immediately intuitive and often quirky between browsers. I would prefer tabs - in fact I thought you had it right with the hybrid interface of most-often-used tabs with a drop-down overlay of other services. It allowed for easy access to (what I felt are) the most important sections, and everything beyond that was as close as a single click.

If the drop-down list must stay, please make it stay open on click (rather than a hover effect) with an explicit close/cancel button, otherwise I find myself chasing the menu with an over-zealous mouse. Older users may find the required precision difficult to master as well. Additionally, the target for showing the list should be bigger than the arrow graphic for the same reasons.

From Amazon's Q/A article on the design change it sounds like this has been something they've worked on for a while, so chances of them rolling back to the old design are slim. Still, given how often the tabs are cited as good design elements its sad to see them retired. I've yet to find a user interface that's as easy to use as virtual tabs.

I've been slowly updating all of my online accounts to use my new Gmail account. There are many things to love about Gmail (ease of use, labels, ginormous storage limits), but one of my favorite features is auto-aliasing.

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Those of you who know my gaming habits can attest to my great attraction to games that have significant extended play or replay value. I figure if I'm going to drop $50+ dollars on a game, I want to enjoy it for a long time before having to go out and buy another one. This is particularly true since parenthood as I can't devote a ton of time upfront to a game, but rather prefer to play it out over time. The Sim line of games from Maxis is a great example of this. They can be played for years, literally, as long as you keep investing in the game environment. Maxis has long been rumored to be creating a new variant of the Sim line of games called Spore that deals with a broader environment of game play. This video introduction to the game is a bit dated (February 2006), but I only just came across it and was blown away by the expansiveness of the game. The game starts by controlling a tiny Protist-like creature. Through the process of evolution you eventually "upgrade" your creature to something more complex, eventually creating small tribes of these creatures then growing them into competing and trading cities. This is just the tutorial for the rest of the game, though. Watch the video to see just how amazing this game could be. For this kind of game-play value I could be easily persuaded to pay double a typical game price.

Are you on Last.fm yet? If not, sign up and send me a friend request (chrisbloom7). They have a great selection of music on there from all genres.

What, you've never heard of it?

Well, if you don't know about it yet, it's basically a service that allows you to stream music from artists that are like artists that you like. (That's the second time I wrote that line and I swear there's a joke to be had about it...) They have a player that you download and install, which you can then use to search for music tagged a certain way or similar to another artist. For instance, I've been tuning in to the "Similar to Silent Drive" stream and finding some really great stuff. (Check out the Top 10 listing on the sidebar of my blog.) Every now and then you get a track from that particular artist too.

Some of the music they host is available as a free download or for purchase. Oh, and they track what you like and don't like (via the Love/Hate buttons and depending on what music you skip over) to serve you better selected tracks. And as if that wasn't enough for you, Mr. Self Righteous Bastard, they also have this thing called a "scrobbler", which has nothing to do with fellatio despite what you may think, but instead tracks all of the music that you listen to in other media players (WMP, Winamp, iTunes, even your iPod) and adds it to your Last.fm stats. But wait, there's more - all those stats get used to pair you up with virtual neighbors, members with similar interests, and let you listen in on what they are digging.

That's all under the free account. There is a premium subscription level that allows you to play certain bands on demand, among other equally lascivious perks.

So, if you're over that whole righteous bastard thing, go sign up!

As one of about a billion announcements from Apple earlier this week, iTunes 7 was released. The iTunes user community has been asking for many feature enhancements since the last major release, so I was eager to see what Apple had changed in the new version. The short-list of new features includes a built-in updater (prior to this you had to reinstall with every new release), download manager, automatic download of album art, iPod content summary report, and a bunch more. It sounded good so I downloaded the new version and installed it.

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