Was just idly gazing at the remote control that came with a new VCR I
bought last week, and was suddenly struck by the parallels between it and
many bleeding-edge Web sites one sees; parallels in the sense that both
are user interfaces to electronic media, and both do a rather rotten job of
it.
The remote is a deep gray beauty, with oh-so-discreet-and-tiny oblong
buttons for all its major functions. The buttons are also deep gray, and
the text beneath each is a lighter shade, in about 4-point type. Some of
the captions are obvious -- FF, Play -- while others are more cryptic:
Hold, Return, System. In any but the brightest light I can't read the damn
things anyway, so it makes little difference. And the buttons are so small
and closely spaced that I get no real tactile feedback from them. Nor are
they grouped in ways that make any particular sense to me, though I'm
sure they do to the clever engineers in Japan who designed them.
All this I find highly analagous to many corporate (and ad agency) sites,
with their expensive 4.x-browser-compatible designs: discreet navigation
buttons tucked into out-of-the-way frames and layers, hard to read or
find in many cases. Oh they *look* mighty nice, but as with my remote,
function has taken a back seat to form.
My old VCR remote, on the other hand, while rather a humble and, some
might say, even simple-minded device, was much easier to use. The
buttons were big, rubbery, and color-coded. They were plainly labelled
and instantly distinguishable. They were even different shapes depending
on their function, meaning that I could feel my way around in the dark (er,
so to speak.)
Oh, the VCR itself was pretty modest too. Unlike my new one, it didn't
have Four-Head Crystal Lock Scanning With SynchroMesh Transmission, or
whatever the hell it is. On the other hand, it *did* perform its primary job
-- playing video tapes -- with admirable reliability and simplicity. Sort of
like many of my favourite Web sites, come to think of it.
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Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Town of Almonte site: http://www.almonte.com/
Business site: http://www.federalweb.com
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