Dawn of Silverlight

After sometime in development under the less cool code name “WPF/E” Microsoft‘s Silverlight 1.0 launched earlier this week. Its launch is a direct shot at Adobe’s s ubiquitous Flash technology. I think we might see the battle for rich internet applications and mindless (yet seemingly always addictive) online games heat up.

So just what is Silverlight? Well to quote the Microsoft propaganda “Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.”

Basically it is like Flash only you can use C# and .NET.

However, having seen it in action I’m a little excited about leveraging my developers existing .NET skills by creating line of business applications as rich internet applications. A few things I really like about Silverlight are that it's installer is small, fast, and automatic, and it is also required by a lot of popular sites that touch millions of users. For example, Microsoft sites like Halo 3 videos and the MSN Election 08 site.

A surprise announcement from Microsoft accompanying the official release was full support for Linux. I believe the development community would fill this gap using Mono or something to port Silverlight to Linux. But Microsoft throwing their support behind a Linux implementation is a nice gesture.

Who will win: the reining champ Flash or the newcomer with good pedigree Silverlight? Only time will tell.

Mr. "Save" Icon

The “Save” icon, that little 3.5 inch floppy reminds me of comfort food. When exposed to an interface for the first time it makes one feel warm, comfortable, at home, and like you know what you are doing. Mr. “Save” icon you have been with us from MSPaint on Windows 95 through the Office 2007 “Ribbon” on Vista. Your metaphor is so simple and intuitive “Click me to keep your data safe like you keep data safe on a 3.5 inch floppy.” Wait a second; I do not keep data safe on a floppy. When was the last time I even used a floppy? My computer does not even have a floppy drive.

I wonder what my son is going to think when he starts using computers and someone instructs him to click the little blue square looking thingy with the little white box inside it to save his work. He certainly will never use, maybe not even ever see a real floppy disk. For him the metaphor breaks down. Instead of the simple and intuitive metaphor of real objects and actions (3.5” floppies and saving to them to keep data), it becomes completely abstract (The blue square looking thingy means keep).

I am not going to suggest the industry do away with icons, or even the standard “Save” icon. Users recognize functionally suggestive icons more rapidly than text because they directly associate with a physical object or action. Icons should suggest the functionality with which they are associated in a meaningful way.

A design I have found useful to overcome the “Save” icon problem is to have multiple icon sets or themeable icons. Applications have different users each with a unique background and knowledge. Creating a custom icon set for each user would be ideal from a usability perspective but not practical. One solution is to provide a capability for users to customize icons themselves, but experience has shown most users will not do it.

So what is the happy medium? Create an icon set or theme for each of your application's personas. (If you do not know your application's user personas ... you should) In my experience, three maybe four themes are sufficient. This provides a usability gain for most users, with minimal work from the development teams and users.

Mr. “Save” icon, we salute your good work and service. Now for the good of my child . . . go away.