Luckily, I got a job at the Faculty Research Center of University Computing Services, and was at ground zero of a high-tech lab that was allowed to try anything new. Anything. And this WWW stuff was really new, and really exciting.

Gopher was cool, but Mosaic was cooler.

Dr. Rashidi mentored me through the next few years as we embarked upon a fantastic journey of web servers, httpd, Mosaic web browsers, Marc Andreeson, NCSA, Netscape web browsers, Sun Sparc 5 Workstations, Winsock protocols, Solaris, NeXT, and a whole host of other highly technical things that 99.99% of people dismissed.

This was when Yahoo was still a project at Stanford. Google (Googol) was still a word that meant (1) followed by (100) zeroes. Mark Zuckerberg was only 8 years old.

The "world wide what?" people would say as I told them what I was working on. Ha! Boy I wish I had those conversations video taped.

But three years later, in 1995, people like Jeff Bezos realized it was going to be big. Really big.

Perhaps so did Phil Alden Robinson, a writer/director who released a fairly obscure 1992 movie called Sneakers. It's one of my very favorite films, especially for this line of dialog:

The world isn't run by weapons any more, or energy or money. It's run by little ones and zeros, little bits of data - it's all just electrons. There's a war out there old friend, a world war. And its not about who's got the most bullets, it's about who controls the information, what we see and hear, how we work, how we think. It's all about the information.

While he could be talking about media, he's actually talking about computer networks. Email. Web. Facebook. Google. Twitter.

As you can imagine, Phil's prediction turned to be quite correct. Eerily correct. It's all about who controls the information.

In this clip from Sneakers, Robert Redford (Marty) finds an experimental electronic device that can hack into any system by quickly rendering any encryption useless. Ben Kingsley (Cosmo) wants the device for himself. They then discuss the power of who controls the information...

I love this. It made me smile when I saw it. Great job Google.

Note that as you bring your mouse over to the left hand side the content will change color to indicate a rollover. However, I still have my mouse button down, which means its a down state rollover which is also scrolling! How neat.

User interfaces are tough to understand without seeing them move so check out this :30 second video clip of it in action.

At first glance, it makes sense. There is a risk, however.

On MacOS I can click and grab that area and move the browser window around. Imagine I'm at the end of an airline or hotel reservation (several pages of checkout) or other critical page, and when I go to move my browser window, poof! the back button is triggered and I've lost all my work!

As you can imagine, this particular scenario is a nightmare. Now, once I realize that "hit" area is in fact part of the browser back button, I will certainly steer clear of it when wanting to move the window around. Also, there is that huge title bar at the top! But to some, it will be an awful painful lesson to learn, eh? Perhaps a larger back button would be the answer? Who knows?

I wish Jared, Firefox, and team the best of luck, Firefox is my favorite browser and I only want it to get better!

Mega Menus

I call these extra big menus mega menus but there are other names for them. I really like them a lot and tried to get B&H Photo to do them as well. As you can see Amazon is using them again but in a cleaner iteration, and behind the Shop by Department label. This gives more real estate to the search box and header in general. When you mouse over, up it comes (note you don't have to click) and it's snappy and speedy. I really love how they integrated content in here as well. See how the "ad" extends past the boundaries of the box? This is very effective. It draws your eye there quickly.

If you have a single horizontal or vertical row of boxes/ads, try using non uniform shapes. The eye just catches on these like crazy and people scan through them slower. This is what you want.  Basecamp from 37 Signals does a great job of breaking out of the "box" mentality.

The call to action here is at the end and I do wonder why the ad is ALL CAPS, but my eye was still drawn to this and I stared at it. Bold and Beautiful, just like the soap opera!

Here's another example using the famed Amazon Kindle. See how the content juts out from the container? Lovely. The transparency of the image is almost like magic. I stared at this for a long time, because it was so beautiful.

Beauty in design is essential. Don't take my word for it, take Don Norman's - he talks about how good design makes you happy.

I do wish they would have used a button here. A clear call to action instead of a small text link, but I still saw it and clicked it. No problemo.

Here's the final example and a great way to get free music or recommend music. I wonder if it changes with my purchase behavior? That would be powerful. And I love the button - great call to action.

Note: they dropped the "dot com"

So congrats on launch to the design team! It's not easy to design a site for hundreds of millions of customers!

Redesigned Header Area

The header area is now "Your Amazon" "Cart" and "Wishlists" - I love they are pushing wishlists, something I strived to do at B&H Photo. Wishlists are a FANTASTIC method for driving purchase behavior, gifting, and repeat/loyal business from customers!

(Click for full size)

Source.

Facebook just released a new comment view feature for your photo albums. Click it, and you'll see photos in a photo album arranged down the left hand side with associated comments on the right hand side. Very useful!