Introduction to Thought Pipe

[Paul Silver]

Hi, during the discussion after my talk at Barcamp Brighton 4, several
people wanted a place where they could publically swap ideas, in the
hope that someone would pick them up and develop them. This came from
Danny Hope's experience where he described a CSS comment stripping
service on his Flickr, and David Stone then built it for him.

As a developer, I like short projects I can build for a fun break from
client work, and it looks like I'm not alone in that.

As a starting place for people to talk about ideas, I've opened this
Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/thoughtpipe - where people
can start talking about their ideas. Please join up and put your oar in.

The inspiration for my small projects was the 5K App competition,
organised by John Montgomery - http://www.fivepoundapp.com/meetup/16/
and you can read about what I did here -
http://www.paulsilver.co.uk/blog/tag/5kapp/

I'll put some ideas in to the group in the next day or so to try to kick
things off.

Cheers

Paul
--
Paul Silver - tel: 01273 906020 or mobile: 07813 654285
Web Development: http://www.paulsilver.co.uk
Search Engine Promotion: http://webpositioningcentre.co.uk
Check your web pages: http://www.spidertest.com

[Jimothy]

Look at all the tumbleweed in this place...

I guess people are either a) still recovering from the awesomeness-in-
a-ramshackle-art-gallery that was bcb4, or c) still writing up their
blog posts about it.

I've been doing neither (well, I have been pretty knackered since),
just had a hectic week at work (you tend to take on a lot of stuff
when there's only two of you in the company!).

Well, for now my brain is pretty frazzled. Most of my ideas for
integrating everyday digital activities into one handy device have
already been implemented by the almighty HTC Hero (http://is.gd/
37jDk). Yup, I'm still drooling over it.

One thing that I will add is this. Coming into the webdev game as a
bit of a n00b a couple of months ago, and seeing CSS3 and HTML5
emerge, they don't really seem that awesome, just more awesome than
what was before, which was, well, not that great. CSS3 transitions/
transformations seem to me to be like basic PowerPoint animations.
Carrying on from that, why not have proper cheesy PowerPoint
transitions when you click on a link - the whole page whizzes/swirls/
blinks/swipes/buggers off the screen, then the page you clicked on
beams out from where you clicked? They always said I was a
daydreamer... I don't know what I was expecting from HTML5 and CSS3,
but it was probably more interesting than rounded corners (useful
though they are). Any thoughts on the matter?

I always come up with nifty ideas, so I'll jot them down on my
imaginary ubersmart phone, and scribble them up here when I, well..
get round to it.


All the best,

Jim
--
@jimineycricket


PS I meant to say something at bcb4. Paul mentioned he'd like
something to bookmark a page with del.icio.us and get the shortened
url for tweeting in one foul swoop (hehe, dya geddit?). This may
help, and you may have seen it already, but when you mark a page
del.icio.us, bless 'em, have a feature now where you can hook up to
your twitter account and send the link directly, and edit the rest of
the tweet. I've yet to see it work properly yet though.

[al james]

> Look at all the tumbleweed in this place...
>
> I guess people are either a) still recovering from the awesomeness-in-
> a-ramshackle-art-gallery that was bcb4, or c) still writing up their
> blog posts about it.

Ha ha. Yes I have been meaning to get on here ever since. My week has
gone crazy though. I will 'mind dump' some more ideas at the weekend!

Shall we have one thread per idea?

>
> One thing that I will add is this.  Coming into the webdev game as a
> bit of a n00b a couple of months ago, and seeing CSS3 and HTML5
> emerge, they don't really seem that awesome, just more awesome than
> what was before, which was, well, not that great.  CSS3 transitions/
> transformations seem to me to be like basic PowerPoint animations.
> Carrying on from that, why not have proper cheesy PowerPoint
> transitions when you click on a link - the whole page whizzes/swirls/
> blinks/swipes/buggers off the screen, then the page you clicked on
> beams out from where you clicked?  They always said I was a
> daydreamer...  I don't know what I was expecting from HTML5 and CSS3,
> but it was probably more interesting than rounded corners (useful
> though they are).  Any thoughts on the matter?
>

Certainly possible. The trick would be to do it in way that does not
affect SEO and accessibility.

You could certainly write a javascript function that attaches a event
handler to all links (or even the window on unload handler) so that it
does the exit transition before navigating to the new url. The js
thing would also need to display the intro transition on the page
loading (which means you need to do something nifty to make the page
load in a non-visible state without affecting SEO).

However, I suppose you do have to ask if this is a good thing for the
user? I might find fading transitions slightly annoying if done badly.
But then again, there may be situations where this does aid
'feedback' (e.g. that the page is loading).

What do the UX people here think?

[Danny Hope]

2009/9/11 al james <al.j...@gmail.com>:

> However, I suppose you do have to ask if this is a good thing for the
> user? I might find fading transitions slightly annoying if done badly.
> But then again, there may be situations where this does aid
> 'feedback' (e.g. that the page is loading).
>
> What do the UX people here think?

I think that "you do have to ask if this is a good thing for the user" :)

--
Danny Hope
User Experience Consultant, Brighton (UK)
+44 (0)7595 226 792
@yandle