This question is enticing because of it’s breadth. It’s fairly easy to find flaws with a particular browser.

To point out how Safari makes it difficult to find tabs because it doesn’t show favicons. Or to point to Internet Explorer’s annoying bottom pop-up as another example of Microsoft intruding on the pure web experience. Firefox has a notably dated look, and together with Safari the ‘separate text entry field to search’ thing gets old really quickly. Even Chrome isn’t perfect. It could learn a thing from Safari’s downloader.

Yet that wasn’t the question he posed – he wanted to know how browsers, as a class of application, fell short of delivering the optimal experience.

I had a few thoughts I shared with him, but upon further pondering I believe there are 9 things that all web browsers can improve on. By no means do I suggest that these are easy problems. Arguably all browsers have them precisely because they are difficult to solve.

The demon of network lag

Everyone is focused on speed. Google led the charge, first with search, then with Chrome. These days it’s a given that javascript and rendering performance are important. Even Microsoft has stepped up to deliver a responsive web browser in IE9.

Yet despite all the progress in browsers, and despite the fast FiOS networks (mine clocks in at a not insignificant 30Mbps) the browser still feels like… a browser. There is a noticeable lag between the user and their content. Between the user and their app. The browser falls far short of native applications when it comes to latency and responsiveness. It’s obvious that there is a network in-between – an intermediary gating the overall experience.

Tabs, tabs everywhere but not a window manager in sight

Every operating system has a built in way of managing windows. An optimal way to switch between different applications that are natively supported first class actions. Whether it’s the humble alt-tab on Windows, or the more esoteric launcher on Mac, the OS does a great job giving users the tools to manage their windows.

All of this falls apart when browser tabs are thrown into the mix. If you’ve ever hunted for the tab you knew was open somewhere, then you know what I’m talking about. The only obvious way to find it is hunting through every tab in every window for the browser. Sometimes these different open windows are even buried behind the same icon on the task bar or dock.

Let’s login again, and again, and again

I login to my machine. I login to my web browser. I login to my website. Why? Why do I need to login three times?

This shows another integration point that is sorely needed between the operating system, browser and websites. In an ideal world there would be a single login identity which controlled everything from OS to browser to website. Possibly with some federated authentication model built in at one of those stages.

Chrome OS is the closest here, merging the OS and browser login. From everything I can tell, Microsoft will deliver a similar experience in Windows 8. Yet this still doesn’t solve the challenge of login to web sites.

Perhaps Google will solve this by pushing Google ID as a login provider. Or perhaps Microsoft will extend their partnership with Facebook to allow Facebook connect to extend up into the browser and OS.

Regardless, this is no easy problem, and no browser vendor is, or should be, willing to give up control of the user login to a competitor.

We’re all surfing like it’s 1999

If you think about it, the browser hasn’t evolved all that much in the last 10 years. It’s still a frame that contains some controls and a web page. Sure, Safari and Chrome pioneering the smaller frame, and Opera merged a few redundant controls together. IE took it a step further by moving the address bar onto the same row as the tabs. But it’s still a frame.

I’m excited by the work that is being done firstly by the Firefox Junior team for iOS, and then by the Internet Explorer team for the Metro experience for IE10. They’re pushing the browser frame further into the background and letting the website itself shine.

Yet this is still just a variation on a them – making the frame smaller and smaller.

I shudder to suggest this, but perhaps IE web slices has an interesting notion – bring dynamic web content out of the frame and into a more contextual environment. In it’s crudest form one could imagine web-widgets. At it’s best one could imagine rich mashups that were independent of whether either site or app was aware mashing up was taking place.

There’s a whole web out there, but all I see are these 5 sites

Admit it. You go to a few sites every day and that’s it. Occasionally you’ll Google something and browse somewhere else, but most of the time you stick to the same news site, social network, mail client and a few other old faithfuls.

This is insidious, because at first it doesn’t seem like a problem. Why should I try to find anything else if what I have is working? Yet without intending to, the nature of how browsers encourage storage and recovery of websites confines users to a small set of sites.

There’s no notion of discovery unless a user first takes the action to search. Even if I’m reading an article that has 15 relevant other sources the web browser just sits there patiently, waiting for me to ask for those.

Web app stores are a small step in the right direction – a curated and searchable showcase of (hopefully) premium content. We’re already starting to see discovery layered on top of this in the form of features and recommendations.

Yet there is still a world of untapped potential out there for browsers to help me find applicable content and appropriate apps.

Apps are unlinkable

I need to give credit to Uri Schonfeld for this insight. With the advent of “web 2.0” AJAX style apps, the web has devolved into an unlinkable mess. What was once an elegant and reliable construct – the hyperlink – is now a bastardized form that relies on state derived from the server, session and browser. This makes it impossible for a link to be a canonical reference to an item, and among other things, introduces the sharing problem.

Unlinkable mess meets the sharing river of Styx

Each app has been forced to implement sharing in a proprietary way. I forward an email one way, share a document another, and share a status update yet a third way. And it gets even worse when I try to do so across services. The link itself is broken behind client side shenanigans and auth trickery.

The web has no robust notion of verbs. To share. To print. These and more depend on nuance and context that hampers deeper innovation.

My kingdom for a camera (or GPS)

If you compare a web browser to a native tablet or desktop app, the difference in device access fairly quickly becomes apparent. Arguably this area is furtherest along, with evolving standards already allowing access to video devices, and more on the way for access to other hardware like GPS.

Abstraction and intermediaries

At it’s heart the web browser is really just an operating system on top of another operating system. It provides a thin layer of glass that subtly distorts all applications that lie beyond it. These web apps are caught in the nether world of being not quite a native app, and not quite pure web content. And as such you never quite feel fully at home – it’s more like living with a close friend. No matter how many times they say, “Mi casa es su casa” you still can’t quite bring yourself to eat ice-cream straight from the carton.

Moving the web forward

I believe the web has tremendous opportunity to grow, evolve and mature. I think if browsers did these 9 things differently, and appreciably better, the web would move forward faster.

For all who love the web, I pose the same question to you, “What would you improve in all web browsers?”

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Image from Arahman Shehri

In a moment I’m going to share my thoughts on the three eras of iPad apps, but I’d like to dwell on the notion that there can be dramatically different expressions of apps on a platform with such comprehensive design guidelines.

The dawn of computing

At the dawn of computing every app was relegated to displaying text in interesting ways. Some chose menus, some chose modes, but on the whole the experience was clunky and daunting for novice users. As the capabilities of computers evolved, so did the richness of the UI language that apps could provide. On the extreme end, games created compelling interfaces tailor made for their audience. Some, like my much loved Sierra quest games, standardized an interaction interface across a suite of games.

Yet it wasn’t until the advent of GUI systems that the platform itself began to assert a particular design style. Windows, Mac and many other long forgotten platforms provided a set of prebuilt controls – menus, buttons, dialogs – along with guidelines for combining them into usable applications. From that point on, the immense variation we had seen before in UI language was narrowed. The few hold outs who tried to bring the old text style applications onto the new platform stumbled as their UX began to look increasingly old and out of place.

I believe platform design guidelines were (and are) largely a good thing. Application designers could spend less time thinking about control types and layout, and more time creating unique functionality within their apps. As the GUI market matured, and Windows 3 became Windows 95 and then Windows XP, the desktop saw a boon in applications built for the platform.

Many of the best applications deviated from the explicit platform design language to craft a more compelling experience. Even Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player did away with the standard title bar and other accouterments. Unfortunately, many of the worst applications followed suite. I shake my head thinking about how many driver software dialogs thought their settings deserved custom menu bars and buttons. It only served to make them look awkwardly out of place.

The three eras of iPad app

Fast forward a decade, and iPad apps are at a similar juncture with one key and exciting difference.

Prehistoric iPad apps

The prehistoric iPad apps are those that harken back to an earlier time. A time when desktop and keyboard ruled the human computer interaction. A time where the interface was densely packed with features and functionality in an attempt to make the application efficient and every feature discoverable. Or, as so often was the case, every feature equally undiscoverable.

Safari – a good example of a prehistoric iPad app

A prominent example of a prehistoric iPad app is Safari, and to a somewhat lesser extent Chrome. You’ll notice the small and fiddley controls, the tiny untappable tabs, and the 1990’s inspired design metaphors.

If your app looks like this – you’re doing it wrong. You’re doing the equivalent of building a text based application as the era of GUIs was dawning. And it’s only a matter of time before your app is left a fossil on the wayside of progress.

Lest you think that a browser was destined to be a prehistoric app, I urge you to watch the demonstration of Firefox Junior – they’re doing it right.

Modern era iPad apps

Then there are those apps which fully embrace the design guidelines bestowed by Apple. Apps which use the appropriate controls and metaphors. Apps that look and feel like iPad apps. In fact they look so similar it would be difficult to tell them apart from afar.

These apps do nothing wrong, and in fact do many things right. They’re easy to learn, and immediately approachable. They extend the design metaphor held sacred by the iOS platform.

The phrase I would use to describe them is “perfectly adequate”. They’re safe, predictable and in a sense, boring. The magic is lost within a sea of similarity. And examples are all around, but you only need to look to the Mail app for a prototypical example.

The evolved iPad apps

Then there are those apps which have taken the established design metaphors and stretched them to the point of delight. These are the evolved iPad apps. Apps which look impart wonderment with their unique style. Apps which confront you with their character, and force you to engage at an emotion level.

These apps embrace the exciting difference between iPad apps and desktop apps of yesteryear – The delightfully visceral enjoyment that touch interfaces bring. They revel in the naturally playful discovery and almost interpersonal interaction that has come to define touch computing.

When you look beyond games, the examples here are disappointingly few. The obvious example here is Flipboard, but I feel that I would be depriving you of insight if I stopped there. My favorite example of an evolved iPad app is Spotify.

Spotify – an evolved iPad app

I think apart from just being generally a great service, Spotify nails a few design points:

• Smart use of progressive discovery in the music exploration experience. It walks a beautiful balance between density of information and depth of UI.
• It makes the most important things easy, with big play buttons just about everywhere to start the music playing. I’m always shocked at how many music apps still make the act of starting the music so difficult.
• Appropriate and delightful use of asymmetry to focus on the most important content while providing a flow and hinting at user interaction.
• It’s subtly aware of the screen dimensions, and puts the nav bar on the left. Most apps put the bar on the bottom, and even more severely constraint the vertical room when viewing in landscape.
• UI variation keeps it interesting. The radio place mixes up large tiles with small tiles. Contrast this with an application like Netflix, that just looks like rows upon rows of little boxes.

Delightful is possible

If you’re designing an iPad app, don’t stop at the guidelines that Apple provides you. Delightful is possible, and magical within reach. Stretch the touch metaphors. Create an engaging experience that is only possible on a touch device.

Facebook not alone in email snafu

As it is wont to do, progress marched on, and the days of ISPs losing email are long behind us. Even spam protection on the top email services has improved to such a point that “it got lost in my spam folder” is no longer a credible excuse for ignoring someone’s email.

“It didn’t show up in my Gmail priority inbox” doesn’t really let you off the hook in quite the same way. Rather than expressing your heartfelt disappointment at not having connected with a kindred spirit, you’re really just telling them they’re not that important. Ahh, the truth of it all!

Facebook to the rescue with broken tech

Facebook recently did something incredibly brazen and, in my opinion at least, monumentally stupid. They switched the default email address over to the little used @facebook.com address – for everyone, whether they wanted it or not. Then, as karma would dictate, they had a bug in their contact sync that caused all your friend’s email addresses in your contact book to be replaced with the useless @facebook.com address.

Yikes! As bad as this is, Facebook accomplished one thing – “the Internet ate my email” excuse is again completely valid. For at least the next few months you can blame your tardy non-replies on Facebook.

Google+ is also hungry – Eats Messages

At the beginning of this year I made the painful decision to leave Facebook – for at least a year, but hopefully forever. It was with a humility-tinged yet still smug sense of superiority that I watched as Facebook continued to ravage user’s privacy and take advantage of their captive audience.

So this last incident came as no surprise, and justified my social network platforms of choice – Google+ and Twitter.

Yet not a week in to the incident and I find Google+ eating my messages with an ravenous appetite reminiscent of Facebook. Or, at least, it seems entirely like that unless you’re aware of some Google+ secret that has escaped me.

Google+ makes messages undiscoverable.

Yesterday I saw a comment from an old friend on Google+, and decided to message them to say, “hi”. I had my phone with me, so pulled up the Messenger app in Google+, quickly tapped out my message and off it went.

A little while later my friend responded – a win for cross continent communication despite the foibles that Google+ is about to unleash on me. I had just finished a hike up Rattlesnake Ledge, read through his message and made a mental note to respond when I got back to my laptop.

Back at my laptop, the search for the missing message begins. At first I assume, naively that it would show up in my stream, or my Gmail. I was wrong. “Okay”, I thought, “It’s got to be here somewhere. I’ll just go back to the notification center and reply from there.” I can almost here the gods of technology laughing at me now. It was there.

It wasn’t in his stream, it wasn’t on my profile, it wasn’t in my Gmail spam, even Google couldn’t find it when I searched (again, and again, and again) for it. I even reached out to my Google+ followers (encirclers?) for help with no luck. His reply had vanished into thin air.

Eventually I pulled out my iPad, loaded up G+ and the messenger app. Lo and behold it was there. At this point I’ve resigned myself to sending him an email in reply.

To quote Cool Hand Luke, and thanks to Google+, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

I wrote yesterday how I thought Apple has turned evil, and am deeply dismayed by this ruling. However, in spite of Apple’s less than virtuous corporation tactics, I still love Apple products. I love their products with a passion born both of new romance and comfortable familiarity. I love them deeply for every experience that is magical and for every annoyance that never appears.

Today I want to share my love for Apple products. Not as a mindless fangirl caught up in the Apple hysteria – it was as recent as two years ago that I fought my employer to get a Windows machine instead of a Mac. As recent as last year I replaced my iPhone 4 with a Nexus S (and subsequently the now banned Galaxy Nexus). Yet today, unless Apple makes a major design faux pas, I will never buy another non-Apple electronic device.

It all started with the iPad

For many, their “halo device” was the iPod, or the iPhone. The device that finally showed them how easy and seamless Apple product’s can be. It was this ease of use and attention to design excellence that grabbed people. This didn’t happen at an intellectual level – even as the iPod was taking over the market there were still people quoting specifications for other media players that had more memory, faster processors and cost half the price. Yet the iPod won – it touched an emotional part of us the very few products have ever touched. Despite the assumption that Economics 101 students are given of the perfectly rational consumer, we are anything but. We vote with our hearts not our heads.

The iPod wasn’t magical enough for me. It was good, but not so much that I couldn’t make do with something else. I was firmly a Microsoft girl, not only Windows all the way, but actually working on and launching the first version of Zune. Yes, I had one of those first brown Zunes that seemed twice as big and half as cool as the iPod – but I loved it. I loved the subscription music, and I loved the promise of deep integration across all Microsoft products – Xbox, Windows, phones, …

My love affair with Apple started with the iPad. A device so revolutionary that even I couldn’t understand why anyone would use it. I didn’t get the first iPad, because I thought it was a waste of money. I had a computer that was 10x better in all respects and cost just as much. When the iPad 2 was released with a front facing camera, a light bulb went off in my head. My family lives in South Africa, and I recalled all the hassles I’ve had setting up Skype calls with them. Inevitably Windows would choose the wrong input device and lose the video camera signal. Turning a quick 20 min call into an hour of debugging.

The iPad changed all of that, and showed me that so many more magical moments were possible.

More Magical Moments

Skype was truly magical on the iPad, and soon afterwards the lure of playing music around my home from the iPad was too strong, and I purchased an Apple TV. I’ve written extensively about my experience with Apple Airplay – it truly is magical. I kept discovering delightful ways to use the iPad – whether it was watching a movie while exercising, or listening to music in bed while browsing the web. After 6 months with the iPad I realized that I was spending more time using my iPad than my PC. All my activities except “work” were done on the iPad. I had an epiphany – we were entering the post-PC apocalypse, and Microsoft didn’t know it yet.

Once you go Mac you don’t go back

Two weeks ago I made the plunge. I replaced my aging Lenovo laptop with a brand new Macbook Pro Retina. I almost didn’t. I almost bought a Samsung Series 9 three months ago. I almost missed out on the most beautiful computing experience of my life. To a large extent I have Samsung and Microsoft to thank for showing me that Apple is the way. At one time I waited in eager anticipation for Windows 8, even calling it the tech release I most look forward to in 2012. That was before I used it.

I’ve never liked Metro – it’s the children’s coloring book of operating systems. Rather than being playful and fun, the similar tiles blend into a mind numbingly monotonous of boring alikeness. I understand that Microsoft needs to release a tablet operating system, but they went further than that, they chose to inflict the tablet UI on everyone. My beloved Windows key that was my shortcut to the world had been replaced by a Metro I neither wanted nor needed on my desktop. I summed all this up when I lamented that Windows 8 would force me to buy a Mac.

Yet old habits are hard to break. Despite my desire to move over, I couldn’t quite give up the familiarity of Windows, and the hard won efficiencies I had learnt over more than two decades of using Microsoft software (I’m not that old, I just started using computers when I was really young, I promise!). It was with great delight that I actually ordered a Samsung Series 9. This delight was followed by great regret, and soon after hasty cancellation of the order. I realized that Samsung didn’t have a docking station for the Series 9, which meant 5 cables sticking out of my laptop just to use it on a large monitor. Compare this with a single thunderbolt cable from my Mac. As I looked deeper, the entire ecosystem around the Samsung crumbled – no Airplay, and the hodge podge of inconsistent experiences across devices. I finally gave in, and said, “Okay Apple – You Win“.

I love my Macbook

Two weeks ago I bought my first ever Macbook, and three days ago my beautiful Macbook Pro Retina opened itself on my desk, and opened up my world to new possibilities of beautiful design. It would be hard to list all I love about my Macbook, but in just three days I have been delighted in so many ways.

• Startup is instantaneous: There’s a reason you’ll see PC-wielding colleagues walking around with their machines open. It’s because it takes forever to startup, require the network and such. Even when resuming from standby. On the Macbook this is instant.
• Beautiful: The hardware, the software, the gorgeous screen. Everything is beautiful. I realize that the comparison is unfair coming from Lenovo, but still… the Macbook’s beauty captivates me.
• Installing software is something I do again: I had stopped installing Windows software. Not only was there no app store and a plethora of trojans out there, but the experience after installing it was dismal. Every app added it’s on folder and I had to hunt to find it. The dynamic start menu of Windows would make finding applications I use an annoying game. On the Mac everything is right in launchpad. It’s a familiar experience for any iPad or iPhone user too!
• Multiple desktops: The one thing I miss from Linux was having multiple desktops, and Mac brings this back. It’s so simple, so powerful and elegantly done by Apple.
• The only trackpad you’ll ever use again: Like divinity in glass, Apple’s trackpad is a joy to use. From the now common scroll gestures, to the delightful double finger tap to right click, or double finger swipe to go back and next, I can get things done faster and easier.
• Dancing in time to the OS: Animations throughout are subtle enough to get out of the way, but present enough to make every experience feel seamless. Whether it’s closing a window or switching applications the whole experience is a joy.
• Irresistible Keyboard: More important than all these delightful experiences, is that my Macbook beckons me to use it. As a writer this is invaluable. Words came haltingly on my PC, but I luxuriate in typing on the Mac. There’s a visceral pleasure I get moving my fingers over the keyboard that harmonizes with the purpose of my soul to share my thoughts. My Macbook has made me love everything about writing in a way no PC could ever have.

Apple, please make me love all of you!

I may deplore Apple’s business tactics, but I love their products. My deepest hope is that Apple will realize that they don’t need to fight the battle in the courtroom, because they’re already won in the marketplace.

You need only scroll through news of the last few weeks for evidence that Apple has turned evil. The once-doomed computer maker that cowered in Microsoft’s shadow has spent the last two years seeking to squash smaller rivals with a flurry of patent lawsuits. Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy S III, HTC-One – each of these have raised the ire of Apple’s lawyers, and they have succeeded many times in preventing the sale of the device in a country. Most recently they won an injunction against Samsung to prevent sale of the Galaxy Nexus here in the US.

The calls of outrage are starting to grow – Googling ‘Apple is evil’ returns almost 19 million results. Sites like enterprise geeks, ZDNet, and the Guardian all have different reasons for why Apple is evil. From the aforementioned legal funny business to tax avoidance, conditions in it’s factories and it’s single-minded obsession with a closed ecosystem. I think all of these reasons are interesting, and worthy of discussion, but it is the abuses of the patent system I’m most concerned about. With every bad decision patent case law grows in stature against those seeking to innovate in technology. The barriers grow higher against market competition and we shuffle closer to a technological hegemony.

If you are outraged as I am, please take a moment to sign EFF’s Defend Innovation petition, which they will be taking to congress. From large companies like Apple that use patents to crush weaker opponents, to Microsoft who use patents to blackmail hardware manufacturers when they can’t compete, to patent trolls who exist solely to suck resources from successful companies – the technology industry is being assaulted by lawyers wielding nothing more than tricky arguments and wads of cash.

Some time ago I wrote about how to fix software patents - it seems like much of what I wrote then agrees with the EFF’s direction, like limiting the timeframe where patents are enforceable. Today when I signed the EFF petition, I wrote:

I’ve worked in technology for more than a decade and am outraged with how the industry is using patents like ballistic missiles to destroy their competitors. This is good for no-one. It hurts the consumer and cripples a healthy competitive marketplace.

I urge you to consider patent reform that encourages innovation – we’ll all benefit

To be in love with evil

Yet even as I deplore the business tactics that Apple has used, I love their products. My experience with every product has been magical, from the Airport Express to Apple TV to iPhone to iPad, and most recently the Macbook Retina. Apple does a simply amazing job creating products that are works of art in their own right. Which makes me question the need for all these lawsuits. Even if competitors have been copying Apple, their products are at best a pale imitation – like photocopying the Mona Lisa on an overused library Xerox machine running out of ink.

Apple, please see reason – it’s not necessary to sully your good name by unleashing an army of lawyers. Your products are a more powerful assault on competitors than your legal wrath could ever be.

For years now Apple has allowed you to seamlessly project audio from your iPhone, iPad and Mac to any Airplay enabled device. More recently video support was added, so that crisp 1080p video could play from your iPad to Apple TV. Airplay mirroring from your Mac takes this a step further. You can now mirror your entire desktop on an Airplay enabled device. This will be a boon to for folks giving business presentations – I’m already imaging all the great 3rd party accessories to make this seamless, like this airplay enabled projector. It also enables wonderful experiences at home, whether it’s sharing photos with friends, or finally watching all the web video you never could on the big screen – I’m looking at you Comedy Central.

Yet I digress,

Why is Apple Airplay like the Oxo Salad Spinner?

Most of the technologies that make my daily life better are “old” – electric lights, clean running water, refrigeration, the automobile. To make your life better – the great unfulfilled promise of most modern technology. Computers promised us a life abundant with free time, yet we are slaves to them – spending our days emailing and writing documents. Even when we leave the office, we are chained to work. Abundance has turned to scarcity.

Even recent new technology fails. Facebook promised to connect us in deeper and more meaningful ways. Yet by many accounts it is making us lonely and leaving us isolated.

I believe that the last new technology to deliver on it’s promise was the humble voice only cellphone. Since then we have been enticed by grand empty promises. We run towards them in hopeful naivete.

We look for life changing and miss the magic moments

As an aspiring raw foodist I spend a lot of time making salads, complete with ingredients I never knew existed just a few years ago. For my birthday this year my mom bought me a wonderful device – the Oxo Salad Spinner. It’s a simple thing – it helps to dry lettuce and other ingredients in preparation for making a delicious salad. Yet every time I use it, I smile. It saves me a few minutes, is simple to use and easy to clean. There’s also something captivating about it spinning around and around with the press of a button I won’t lie

Before this gift I could still make salad. It didn’t change what I could do. It didn’t really impact most of the rest of my life. A life I still spend chained to ever smaller computing devices. It did something just as precious -  it gave me a magic moment, every time I used it.

Airplay is about magic moments

Whenever I pick up my iPad and play music through my home stereo I smile. I love listening to music, and Airplay has brought all the music I could ever want right to my home. Seamlessly. Easily. When I go to my bedroom it’s two taps to get music playing from the speakers in my bedroom hooked up to my Airport Express. And I smile.

Thanks to Airplay, I listen to music more often and with more diversity than I ever could. Airplay hasn’t changed my life, but it has blessed me with many magic moments. I expect when OS X Mountain Lion arrives I will have many more magic moments.

Lofty promises will eventually end up as disappointment, but every product can deliver a magic moment. A moment that makes your user smile. A feature that makes their life better in one small aspect. It may seem insignificant, but I believe it is one of the highest ideals those in the technology industry can aspire to.

What products have left you with magic moments?

I’ve since come to terms with the fact that I’ll be using a WordPress hosting provider instead of running my own EC2 instances. On the bright side, WPengine has much better performance than I was able to squeeze out of even the largest EC2 instance. But this is a digression from the intent of this post – which is to pour out copious amounts of love for Cloudflare.

3 Reasons Why CloudFlare is Awesome

1. Customer Service: I was blown away by the customer service I received when I was debugging the hacking issues I discovered after setting up Cloudflare. I didn’t know it at the time, but Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare himself, was on email threads with me trying to get to the bottom of the issue. At even the slightest hint of a security issue he had deployed a good portion of his engineering team to investigate, and was in nearly hourly contact with me.

Even once we had discovered the cause of the issue, he was patient enough to answer all my random questions – from how Cloudflare could possibly make money offering a free CDN, to when they would setup CND servers in South Africa.

This incident of superb service alone has bought them a loyal (if currently free tier) customer for life. Though their most recent offerings of Mirage and Polish are sorely tempting me to try the Pro version again.

2. They make the Internet better: There are very few companies that pursue the good of the overall Internet with the purity and dedication that Cloudflare does. My shortlist would also include WordPress and Mozilla, but I struggle to find other companies to place on a similar pedestal. At various times I would have counted Google among them, but the picture is less clear cut these days.

Why do I say they make the Internet better? They provide readily accessible security and performance for any website operator. And they do it at a price anyone can afford. More recently, they have made it simple and free to add IPv6 support to your website. They have more than done their part to ensure the Internet can mature to it’s next stage of growth.

3. They actually do make your website faster: A picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll share two with you. The first was my initial trial of Cloudflare, showing ping times for one of my websites. It’s fairly obvious when I enabled Cloudflare. The second is from Google Analytics, showing page load times.

Cloudflare Improves Ping times

Cloudflare improves page load times

Both of these measurements were taken before their rollout of two exciting features:

• Mirage: Intelligently loads images on your page by loading the visible ones first, and tailors the view to the device and screensize.
• Polish: Automatically minimizes images. It’s like jpegmini and pngout all rolled into one, automatically for any website.

Conclusions on Cloudflare

I don’t normally gush about services, but Cloudflare is truly great. I’d even say the same if they were paying me (which they aren’t). If you care at all about performance you need to give Cloudflare a try.

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P.S. To the Cloudflare team – I saved 385 bytes off the Cloudflare logo by running it through PNGOut. Every byte counts

UX Sins 1&2: Hide the most important commands

Admittedly I’m not a power user of bit.ly, but I would think that for any shortlinks service creating the shortlink and accessing the shortlink would be among the most used tasks. So I find bit.ly’s choice of where to place these commands at best curious. Adding a shortlink is located all the way to the top right. Eye tracking study after eye tracking study has shown that – for users in left to right languages – the top right is mostly ignored. A few commands can get away with it because of general design precedent across the industry – search and login being two such examples. In general though, the top right should be avoided.

Even more troubling, access to the shortlink is hidden behind a curious i icon. At first I thought erroneously, “This control must be here somewhere and really easy to find.” So I looked in vain before eventually reading the help. Yikes. It’s another click away.

UX Sin 3: Promote the least important control

Again I’ll admit to not being a power user – but ‘Your network’ is right in the hot zone of controls I look at first, and is completely useless to me. Why would I ever go there? Why is it so prominent?

The navigation between Bitmarks, Bundles and Stats seems reasonable, but they’ve made an odd choice promoting ‘Profile’ to the same level. I only use that once in a blue moon, right? There’s a reason the entire rest of the Internet world puts profile controls in the top right.

UX Sin 4: Help is needed to use the app

If you find yourself wishing that users had more training, or that help were easier to find then you have failed to create a usable design. Devoting a large portion of your first page to help should be like a flashing siren that something is wrong.

Unfortunately, in this case help is actually necessary because of UX sins 1 and 2.

UX Sin 5: Tooltips everywhere, all at once

As you hover over elements on the page tooltips flash on and off, helpfully informing you of anything from the obvious ‘you can select multiple bookmarks’ to the esoteric ‘click here for the short link’. I’m not against tooltips in general, but their use should be judicious. They should clarify only the most confusing concepts. The best designs will make those concepts self evident.

UX Sin 6: The whole page is full of ads

From the huge help banner at the top, to the ads down the right hand side. The actual content of the experience is squashed into the middle, barely appearing before the scroll bar on my 24″ inch monitor. As a guide, if most of the elements of your page has close buttons, you’re doing it wrong. The one exception is a customizable dashboard, but the UI below doesn’t qualify as a dashboard.

UX Sin 7: Unreadable text

Typography is something you never notice unless it is beautiful, like Microsoft’s Metro, or awful like our example today. The weight, kerning and spacing of the text is sloppy, and makes it difficult to read.

This is actually quite difficult to get wrong in HTML because generally your standard Verdana or Arial work just fine.

It’s easier to criticize

Bit.ly’s new design does a lot wrong – if I had the time and a few more thousand words I could dissect each nuance of the design, but I think by now you get the point. Yet it is easier for me to sit in judgement than create the design. I look at the finished product and see everything that is wrong with it. I didn’t create it. I didn’t balance the conflicting design, business and engineering goals to produce what you see below.

The hard thing about a design is not only making it beautiful and functional, but bringing it to market. The most perfect design is useless if it never sees the light of day.

I hope that the bit.ly team can learn from some of their mistakes, and improve in the next release. I do love their service, just not the redesign.

7 UX Sins of the Bit.ly redesign

I pressed down hard to dock it because sometimes not all devices get correctly hooked up to the docking port. I have no idea why, I imagine there are shorter pins that aren’t quite able to reach the laptop while their taller brethren saunter over with ease. Instead of the familiar three beeps, I heard just two. We could pause for a moment and think about how awful an experience it is to dock and be greeted with a serious of beeps, but that would be a digression from my digression. My keyboard and mouse worked fine, but the monitor couldn’t see Windows.

Swearing gently under my breath I undock, clear the warning about my webcam not undocking correctly, and try again. And again. And again. Eventually I give up and just reboot the machine. June 11th can’t come soon enough.

My iPad security fail

iPad security - not all you'd hope for

This weekend I finally convinced myself that I needed to order the iPad formerly known as 3. In truth, my iPad 2 was quite capable of doing everything I needed, but happily my friend’s desire to purchase my lovingly cared for iPad 2 coincided nicely with my weakness for new technology. With my new iPad on it’s way, I set my sites on preparing my old iPad for conveyance to my friend.

My intent was to give him a clean, reformatted iPad. Devoid of all the music, videos, apps and various other cruft I had accumulated over the year. Being security conscious, I diligently set out to find a secure way to reformat my iPad. It seemed simple enough, go to iTunes, reformat and you’re done.

I started the process, and about 30 minutes later I had a shiny, clean iPad ready for a new home. Or so I thought. My paranoia kicked in, so I restarted my iPad just to confirm that it had been appropriately formatted. Everything looked good, I got the iPad welcome screen that would walk me through setting up my iPad.

I think at this point any reasonable human being would assume that the iPad was properly formatted. Any reasonable human being would be wrong. A few hours after I gave it to my friend he asked me, “Did you mean to leave you Apple credentials on your iPad?”. In a little bit of shock I stuttered, “No”, as my mind quickly raced to everything my Apple credentials could unlock, it’s linked to my credit card, you can view personal details about me – yikes!

Thankfully I had given it to a friend who deleted my credentials even before he told me of my security faux pas. Things could’ve been worse had I sold it on Craig’s list.

I’ll close with some advice I wish I had been given:

When you reformat your iPad, confirm that your Apple credentials are removed!

Before I discuss what I believe are 3 crucial characteristics of startups, it’s worth beginning with a definition. I like how Adam D’ Augellie’s, an associate at True Ventures, describes it.

Adam states that a company is a startup until it finds product / market fit and has begun to scale.

“Until that happens, a company is exceptionally nimble – small engineering team – hacking away trying to solve a problem,” says D’Augelli.

Once the company starts to scale and the model works – the company begins to have a more bureaucratic structure which results in processes that inherently make it less startup like.

For my purposes at least, I prefer Adam’s definition to Steve Blank’s, because it allows me to discuss “startups” that form inside a large organization. While they may not share the same business and financial pressures as traditional startups, I believe that many of the day to day activities can be very similar.

Why would I consider discussing tech startups?

Yesterday Umesh, a colleague of mine at Google, and I were discussing startups – he is actively involved in the Seattle startup scene and mentioned that for most of his career (also at Microsoft and Google), he has worked on relatively stable products. This got me thinking about my own path through Microsoft and Google.

Movie Maker: We rewrote Movie Maker 2 from the ground up to allow us to compete in a market that was getting further ahead.

Media Foundation: I joined the team just when “Longhorn” (the early codename for Windows Vista) went through a reset. We basically threw most of what we were working on, and refocused on a smaller set of scenarios.

Alexandria: An incubation project with a small team in a completely new area for Microsoft and the industry – the closest I’ve come to actually working on a startup.

Zune: The first version of Zune was very much counter big-company culture, and was run as fast and lean as you can picture Microsoft doing it.

Xbox Live Video Marketplace: This was more of a large and quickly built feature on top of an existing product.

Office Web Apps: For the first year, pure glorious exploration and fast progress. For the next two years it was Office, the anti-startup.

DoubleClick Search: We rewrote DoubleClick Search from scratch. New technologies, new industry area (for many folks) and an extremely accelerated pace.

So apart from a short stint on Xbox Live Video Marketplace, my final two years on Office Web Apps, and my current (post rewrite) role on DoubleClick Search, I’ve spent most of my career starting, or re-starting products within large corporations. I’ve found that I excel when I’m during the startup phase, and get frustrated when the project morphs into a mature business.

I’ve spent the last few weeks pondering why…

3 crucial things startups do right

Velocity: Deliver value fast. See what’s working and what’s not, and iterate. Startups do this well. While startup time was mesaured in months > 12 at Microsoft, and months < 12 at Google the velocity is faster and more intense than other teams around you. To be truly competitive it is also faster than other companies in the industry.

Focus: Focus on the customer/business, focus on the user, and focus on a specific set of features. Focus is the lever that magnifies velocity. It’s come to be an overused cliche, but Steve Jobs was right, “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do”

Autonomy and ownership: At a startup everyone is invested in it’s success. Autonomy is high because there isn’t enough time to micro-manage, and the sense of ownership is strong. This causes people to fill in gaps, even it’s not in their role, because it’s the right thing for the customer, the right thing for my product.

Large companies won’t get it right (for long)

Google is an amazing place. I’ve never seen or heard of a company so large swimming so strongly upstream against the currents of bureaucracy and complacency. Yet just as a swimmer in the surf, the currents are strong and incessant. If you don’t rest you’ll drown, and resting means going backwards.

Eroding Autonomy and Ownership

I’ll start with autonomy and ownership. Without strong autonomy and ownership, velocity is just burning you out. Intense focus is a management driven dictate – it doesn’t matter how right management is. It’s exceedingly difficult to foster this on a large team. As the team crests above 30 the impact any one person can have starts to dwindle. Processes are put in place to ensure that such a large team operates effectively, and we run into the paradox of Big Mac vs the Naked Chef, coined for software by Joel Sposky, to quote:

Some things need talent to do really well.
It’s hard to scale talent.
One way people try to scale talent is by having the talent create rules for the untalented to follow.
The quality of the resulting product is very low.

Google hires the smartest people in the world, so in this reference talent refers to “experience in software development”, “experience in this industry”, “experience in this product”, which will by definition dilute as new people are brought onboard.

Blurred Focus

Focus is usually the next thing to go. It’s difficult to keep the corporate mandates at bay. They have been pounding on the door for too long and they start to creep in. Since the team is larger and management is driving the focus, many experienced and talented people chaff against the rigidity of the focus, and try to find ways to do what they believe is important within the straight jacket. As correct as they may be tactically, it also erodes the focus. Management then tightens it’s grip, and more autonomy and ownership leak out.

Stalled Velocity

Velocity is usually the last to fall. It’s descent is masked by the growing team and the tendency of the startup founders to continue to work long hours. Long hours which eventually catch up, and lead to burn out and suboptimal decisions. The necessary processes begin to consume more and more time, and ultimately stabilize as the team size stabilizes.

How can large companies keep internal startups going?

That’s the billion dollar question – A billion dollars is still cool, right? I’m never sure in these days of crazy IPO valuations and acquisitions.

I’ve yet to see a team do this successfully because it’s an exceedingly tough problem. One answer is that successful startups become big organizations, so it’s not really a malaise to be avoided but rather a reward to be celebrated. This creates a different kind of organization, one that I personally think delivers less innovation and market leadership. It becomes vulnerable (not right away) to more nimble competitors.

I believe the secret lies in preserving autonomy and ownership. Creating sub-teams with high degrees of self-determinism and being careful about the touch points between sub-teams. In this world management also has a responsibility to make judicious use of their power – the quickest way to harm autonomy and ownership is to override too many decisions. The sub-teams also need to continue to live up to the higher standards that autonomy sets. Creating a virtuous cycle of management delegating authority and teams proving worthy.