It seems I’m not alone in noticing how
technology makes life harder for writers,
specifically the part of writing that involves throwing obstacles
at characters. Yeah, the young girl might be lost and alone in a dark
alley, but she also probably has a cell phone. Sure, the hikers may be
in an unfamiliar woods, but wouldn’t they have a
GPS?
I’ve run into that problem while writing for Sfstory, mostly because
the level of technology is so high. I’ve dealt with it to some extent
by making long-distance communication awkward; otherwise situations get
resolved too quickly. (Plus, I bill it as comedy, so the story doesn’t
have to be 100% bulletproof, nice as that would be.)
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Smart Tags and the Third Party Link
Now that A List Apart
has posted a super-long look at “Smart Tags”,
I can give my own opinion without having to do too much research or synthesis
(phew!).
To refresh your memory, “Smart Tags” are a technology very similar
to Apple’s Data Detectors.
The idea is that the computer searches for bits of text that follow certain
formats, like URLs or
city names, and then allows users to perform certain actions on the text it
finds. Apple Data Detectors, for example, allow users to select a
URL in any program and
open it in an appropriate internet application. The difference is that
Apple Data Detectors wait for the user to select text and then option-click
on it before presenting a list of possible actions to perform while Smart
Tags draws a dotted line underneath text which matches one or more of the
installed tags. It doesn’t wait for the user to request it.
That, I think, is where the irritation comes from. If the user has to
select text and option-click (or right-click) on it, then it’s more clear that
the list of actions comes as the result of the user’s activity rather than
being an intrinsic part of the document. Dotted underlines, on the other hand,
do appear to be part of document.
There’s also an issue of context. If Microsoft wants to create a Smart Tag
that links references to Microsoft’s Office suite to their Office web page,
how can they distinguish them from random phrases involving the word office?
Apple Data Detectors have an advantage there, in that the user has informed
the software that something in the selected text is worth acting on.
The other thing that irritates people is the idea that Microsoft is
effectively modifying their web pages without their consent. When people
browse with IE 6, they’re
seeing additional link-like objects on the page which the original author did
not include. Savvy users will recognize that they’ve been generated by the
software, but most people won’t know enough to make the decision.
Again, the issue is one of explicit activation. If Microsoft had a button
on the toolbar which said “Display Smart Tags” and people had to push it
before the tags got inserted, then no one would be complaining; it would
be obvious that the tags were something extra that
IE is adding. No one objects to the
sites like Lynx Viewer or
Crit,
both of which make significant modifications to pages before presenting them to
the viewers, but both also require that the user explicitly request their
services.
This illustrates one of Microsoft’s fundamental misunderstandings. The
company seems to believe that making things easier for users involves
automating actions by trying to guess what the user wants to do instead of
writing software that provides a consistent, learnable interface. Driving cars
isn’t easy to learn, and the controls don’t necessarily map to real-world
parameters like speed and acceleration, but people do learn to
drive and thankfully don’t have to worry about the gas pedal trying to
second-guess how fast they want to go based on some mysterious
criteria that may or may not take all the relevant factors into account.
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