Apart from this being inconvenient, it struck me that being able to take screenshots — and more importantly sharing them — really adds a lot to the experience of a device.

Damn You Autocorrect! is a perfect example of this: people collecting examples of the iPhone’s quirky autocorrect and sharing them.

On Facebook many of my friends share screenshots. I often do as well when I see something worth sharing. For instance, last week I saw this bizarre image on the Malaysian Airways website and put it up on Facebook:

Oh, men! Yes we’re so trying, but you women still love us!

Had I not been on my desktop, I would not have been able to share this given the capabilities of my Android phone.

But many friends with iPhones do post screenshots from their phones.

One friend, @bendog, was recently listening to ‘Common People’ by Pulp. He wanted to make a comment on Facebook about the song, so he took a screenshot on his iPhone and uploaded it to Facebook:

Another friend, @Louiseontwitr, was looking for a Google Shopping app. But a funny thing happened: iTunes took her straightforward and innocent search and suggested something fairly inappropriate. So she took a screenshot on her iPhone and uploaded it to Facebook:


And I’ve seen plenty of weather-related screenshots from friends in London with iPhones (this one in particular from @indeox):

On iOS, screenshots are a piece of cake.

Apparently newer versions of Android make taking screenshots possible: but for other users of older Android devices the only way to take a screenshot is by rooting the phone or following this ridiculous process.

iPads too can take screenshots — but how about Android tablets? It’s not much better. And how about the iPad’s latest competitor, Amazon’s Kindle Fire? Well you can just follow these 21 simple steps. Yes, TWENTY ONE. On iOS? Hold the power button and sleep buttons. Done.

Android users could snigger at iPhone users for a while when they didn’t have copy and paste: but to me the screenshot ability is just as essential to any piece of hardware.

Just like a camera captures your experience in the real world, a screenshot does the same for any digital experience.

This problem is just as bad on game consoles. I’ve long played games on PCs, but have only just recently switched to the Playstation 3. One huge thing I miss is the ability to take screenshots.

For me, killing two people in Battlefield 2 at once was worth a screenshot, even if I died seconds afterwards

Steam understands how important screenshots are to sharing experiences. So much so they give all users 1GB of free cloud storage purely for storage and sharing of screenshots. (And beyond just screenshots, video capture for gaming is another great way to share game experiences).

Newer Android phones such as the Galaxy S2 can take screenshots: hopefully all new Android models will soon follow suit. But there are so many other phones and consoles that just lack this functionality: Windows 7 mobiles, Blackberries, Sony PSP and PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo 3DS and Wii. On some its possible, but not without connecting it to a PC in some way.

App and games publishers should be livid at these platforms not having this feature. Sharing screenshots is sharing your experience of a piece of hardware and/or software. It’s a critical feature that Apple nailed long ago.

Furthermore, it’s brand exposure: everyone knows the unique chrome of the iOS because iPhone users so often share screenshots from their phone. Android, Blackberry, webOS, Windows Mobile… sure you’ve seen these phones, but you’ve never seen screenshots shared around. However your knowledge of the aesthetics of iOS is no doubt far greater than any other one of these in part of the simple fact you can share screenshots from Apple devices.

My next phone — Apple, HTC, Samsung or other — will definitely have to have this feature. But until then, at least I can rely on my old trusty iPod.

Since this launch, I’ve noticed that Google is keen to hear my feedback on the new design.

Really keen.

At first I just hit the close button. The second, third and possibly fourth time I did the same. Possibly the fifth time it appeared, I actually gave them feedback, telling them not to worry — the new design was fine, but please stop pestering me with the pop up.

Yet it kept coming back. It’s like a zombie: it won’t die unless you shoot it in the head. But the problem is, I don’t know where the head is.

Last Sunday, I knew I was going to be on my computer most the day doing work. First thing that greeted me when I checked my email? Of course, the pop up. So between now and then I’ve been taking screenshots every time it’s appeared. Between now and then, I’ve restarted Chrome and my computer several times, logged in and out of Google, submitted more feedback begging for them to stop bugging me and even took the damn tour of their new Gmail in a vain effort to get this black box out of my inbox. And it’s the same situation on my work computer: at least a few times a day, my little black box friend will rear its ugly little head.

I’ve feedback to Google twice about this, and heck I’ve even tried tweeting Gmail. What can possibly stop this menace?

Now, this is where I’m interested to see whether this is just a personal overreaction to a tiny detail. I’m a bit obsessive about details. I have zero unread emails in my inbox, and it sends a cold shiver down my spine when I see people with even a few unread emails not attended too. Perhaps this pop up is annoying me because it’s interfering with my carefully groomed email environment?

Or maybe it’s more that when a user sees an ‘x’ icon on anything, it’s an expectation that once you have clicked on that ‘x’, whatever dialogue is attached will disappear, forever, unless the user takes action that justifies its return.

And I haven’t done anything to justify its return. Why are Google doing this? Is the code to keep it hidden broken, or is a strategy to painfully wring as much feedback out as possible?

And is this annoying anyone else as much as me?

Update, 17th November 2011: Well, seems I’m not the only one who’s been bugged by this: http://www.google.co.uk/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=google+new+look+feedback+popup

But, that said, I haven’t seen the pop up for a few days. Hooray!

From the outset, to be honest, I found it hard to really understand the hype. It’s by no means a bad book, but just not as — well, “enchanting” as one would expect. But I kept going, until I hit this point: speaking about the concept of being a “mensch” (based on the Yiddish expression for being beyond just a human), Kawasaki ends an anecdote about actor James Garner with these words:

…in other words, Garner was saying, “Don’t menschion it”.

Ugh. Really Guy? I instinctively slammed the book shut at that point. A book on enchantment had actually made me feel so disenchanted I slammed it shut because of an appallingly cheesy pun. For me, the book’s credibility had just vanished.

But aren’t all puns appalling and cheesy?

By coincidence, shortly after reading that pun, I saw this wonderful video from comedian Rich Hall:

I’m not cuing the video to the pun: watch the whole thing, you won’t regret it — it’s genius (but the pun is at 2:19 if you can’t wait or missed it).

Rich Hall’s pun? Now that’s enchanting and funny.

Humour is a powerful thing. Even with design. Google is a great example: the “I’m feeling lucky” button through to many Google Doodles. Twitter’s Fail Whale is another great example. It can lower the tone, relax and even amuse people in otherwise frustrating situations.

But it’s a dangerous approach: if the fail whale wasn’t so cute, it might not work. And this is the problem with puns: they are the riskiest form of humour. I disagree that they’re the lowest form of wit: instead I think they’re hardest form of wit to execute. For every Rich Hall that makes a genuinely funny one, there’s a thousand terrible ones being made by your uncle and member of senior management no one likes.

So sorry Guy, but for me you’re now in the same category of wit as the latter two examples.

I think I’ll move on to my next book.

However, the few threads going on in my stream are all related to Google+ itself — almost like a meta social network. As one friend remarked:

‘Right, since it seems Google+ is the place to talk only about Google+, i’ll continue the trend: Create a Circle, and then delete it…. enjoy the animation :-)’

Since it’s currently invite only, it’s understandable that activity on the network is fairly light. But what’s a social network without the social side? I wonder if Google are restricting sign ups just to ensure the service doesn’t collapse under the influx of users?

Talking about Google+ 48 hours after launch, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra commented:

Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way

Or maybe it’s a bit more strategic: building up the hype, similar to what happened with Gmail when it launched. A Gmail invite was like a golden ticket then, and a Google+ invite is the same today. People are desperate to get in there.

But will restricting access to a new social network ultimately lead to its demise? Especially in the light of massive competition from the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Given the established networks people already have elsewhere, surely creating a critical mass of social contacts is vital on any new social application?

It’s hard to tell how Google+ is fairing this early into its existence, but Google Trends paints an interesting picture:

Google+ trend

The end of that line is fascinating: I’m really curious to see where it moves over the next few weeks.

Update (4th July): the trend is definitely declining.

Unfortunately, it’s looking not far off going the way of these ‘flops’:

Google Buzz trend (post launch, February 2010)

Google Wave trend (post launch, May 2009)

(See the following month here – the decline continues)

Apple Ping trend (post launch, September 2010)

For comparison, let’s look at a recent social media success: Tumblr.

Tumblr trend (30 days after launch)

Spluttering, but the sharpness of that initial spike is quite remarkable (and the all time trend of Tumblr is quite staggering also).

So what way will the line go for Google+? Up or down? I wonder if it’s just a bit too much like Facebook without offering really much more. Maybe there is more it can offer; but I’ll need a lot more friends on there first before I can really judge.

While watching the video (on the TED website) I noticed the subtitle options. TED has a fantastic translation scheme where users can transcribe translations for videos — a staggering 18,265 translations so far. But user experience-wise, this scheme has some critical issues.

The default labeling for the subtitle feature is ‘Subtitles Available in: X languages [Off]‘. Your main call to action to help people who perhaps don’t speak English is… well, in English. There’s not even any sort of icon to suggest non-English content is available: unless you speak enough English to understand ‘subtitle’ or ‘languages’, then your really reliant on pure luck to spot this. And even then, there’s another trap: you must know the English name for your language. This same issue repeats itself on the actual translation page — users are presented with a list of language names ‘in your language’ — but the language names are all in English.

It’s quite probable that most users will be able to find their own language in a list of English names. But it’s not fun, and by no means a good user experience — consider finding a link entitled ‘Inglés’ on a website in Spanish.

A similar problem is present on the TED homepage. To access the huge translation program, you need to select the link ‘Translations’. Again, you need to know the English word.

Interestingly, if you search for TED on Google in another language, it’s pretty good at sending you to the relevant translation pages. And if you have an in-browser translation feature (such as Chrome), this also makes it much easier to find these translations in your language (except even if you do translate the whole page, the subtitle options in Flash won’t get translated).

The TED strap-line ‘Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world’ is brilliant, yet I think the world could really enjoy TED a lot more if they made a few simple changes:

1. Redesign the video player. Create an icon denoting other language support (and my attempt below is by no means a great icon!) and vitally list languages in their native name (just like on Wikipedia entry pages) — also apply this anywhere else on the site where languages are listed.

Sure, there’s still English in the subtitles area, but I think something like this would be a tremendous step in the right direction. And an extra killer feature would be defaulting subtitles (if available) to the user’s language.

2. Look at the user’s default browser language and give them a clear invitation to view translations in their language:

Of course it’s easy for someone to think up design ideas for someone else’s website: I know nothing about how the TED site works and whether any of this is even feasible, but I still felt it worth noting these ideas down, as it would be great to see the TED site provide a better experience for non-English speaking users.

The rationale for this post came after attending a talk at SXSW 2011 — ‘Flash is Dead, Long Live Flash!‘. The presenters, Elliot Chong and Toby Miller, gave a great overview of strengths and weaknesses of both Flash and HTML 5. However, one point of debate they missed was localisation. Not that I expected to hear it, but I feel strongly about such things considering this is a big part of my day job. During the Q&A session, I brought up the point of localisation — but explaining technical trivialities on the spur of the moment in front of a large crowd of peers can be tricky: hence this post.

Let’s start with the simple things. Now Flash actually provides fine support for most languages — even Chinese and Japanese are OK. Until you get into complex scripts — we’re talking Arabic, Fari, Hindi, Urdu and many more. Basically any alphabet that changes the ligatures between characters, depending on the characters present.

Caveat: I’m a designer first and developer second… if I’ve got something wrong here please let me know — anything new I can learn to make my life easier is always appreciated!

So, let’s look at what problems Flash will give us trying to put Arabic text on to the stage. Let’s use the Arabic word for kitten. This is how it appears correctly rendered in plain old HTML (right aligned since Arabic is read right-to-left — another point to touch on, but we’ll get to that later).

Now, let’s try and show the same text in Flash…

Example one: classic text field (SWF size: 4kb)

The simplest way to put text on the stage in Flash is with a simple text box. Just create it on the stage, copy your text, and you’re away. But no, not with complex scripts. For some reason Flash is incapable of rendering the ligatures between characters together correctly in classic text fields. And the web is full of depressing forum posts about people enduring frustrations at what appears to be such a trivial thing.

Example two: dynamic text field (SWF size: 4kb)

Again, this renders exactly the same as example one. Having dashed your hopes of static text displaying properly, surely you didn’t expect to be able to use dynamic text fields?

Example three: Text Layout Framework (TLF) text field (SWF size: 52KB)

Hoorah! OK, so some credit to Adobe here — so you can display complex scripts properly straight on the stage. But only if you use the new Text Layout Framework, which requires Flash CS5 and Flash Player 10+. And you can expect an additional 50kb on top of the SWF size! Prior to Flash CS5′s release in April 2010, this was all but impossible: the only way to display complex scripts in Flash properly was either as a vector exported from something like Illustrator (which, by the way, has supported complex scripts for a long long time) or as a bitmap from Photoshop (again, supports complex scripts).

Example four: programmatic text field (SWF size: 52KB)

Let’s try creating the text field with ActionScript:

var myFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
myFormat.color = 0x233515;
myFormat.size = 76;
myFormat.font = "Arial";
myFormat.align = TextFormatAlign.RIGHT;

addChild(myTextField);


Well, at least Flash renders the text in the correct order, but it still doesn’t correctly render the ligatures.

Example five: programmatic Text Layout Framework text field (SWF size: 112KB)

Let’s try creating the text field with ActionScript using the Text Layout Framework:

import flash.display.Sprite;
import flashx.textLayout.compose.StandardFlowComposer;
import flashx.textLayout.container.ContainerController;
import flashx.textLayout.elements.TextFlow;
import flashx.textLayout.conversion.TextConverter;
import flashx.textLayout.edit.SelectionManager;

var textFlow:TextFlow = TextConverter.importToFlow(markup,
TextConverter.TEXT_LAYOUT_FORMAT);
textFlow.flowComposer.addController(new ContainerController(this, 200, 100));
textFlow.flowComposer.updateAllControllers();
textFlow.interactionManager = new SelectionManager();


Hoorah, Text Layout Framework comes through again. But look at the file size now: 112KB. That’s 28 times the size of creating a simple text field programmatically.

Of course Text Layout Framework gives you a huge amount of text control, so the larger file size is somewhat understandable — but that big? Just to render a simple word?

These are all very simple examples, but just imagine how much more complex most projects will get in Flash if localisation is required. The extra complexity (and increased file size) from using Text Layout Framework would surely discourage most developers from using it, particularly if there is no need for localisation at the beginning of the project. This introduces a potential nightmare scenario of rewriting entire applications to use Text Layout Framework.

Other gotchas with Flash and localisation

Font embedding

Embedding fonts in your project? Your standard Latin character set (which covers most European languages) is pretty light weight. Let’s look at kitten in other languages:

Example six: Latin font embedding (SWF size: 55KB)

Even adding in Latin I, Latin A and Latin B extended character sets for a font only adds about 56kb to your file (using Arial Unicode as your font). That’ll cover pretty much any Latin-based alphabet, from Icelandic through to Turkish. But now, let’s add Cyrillic and Greek.

Example seven: Latin, Cyrillic and Greek font embedding (SWF size: 85KB)

Now we’re looking at another 32kb on top — 85kb in total. Now that’s really not much… but let’s now look at Chinese and Japanese.

Example eight: Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Simplified Chinese and Japanese font embedding (SWF size: 3.8mb)

For an embedded font that covers Latin, Cyrillic, Simplified Chinese and Japanese — you’re looking at a whopping 3.8mb.

So, if you’re planning on localising with dynamic Flash applications across many languages, you have two choices:

1. Don’t embed fonts, just use device fonts — you’ll lose your nice text on many PCs, but your file size will be manageable
2. Embed fonts but create different files for each language — again, file size manageable but then you’re re-creating a whole bunch of files, and maintenance can become quite a nightmare if you’re not careful

The right-to-left UI

Many right-to-left (RTL) languages are also complex scripts, so we’ve got a bit of a double-whammy here. Arabic, Farsi, Urdu… and even Hebrew (although at least that’s not a complex script!). Since RTL users read right to left, a good UI designer will re-align the interface in the same way: for instance, check out Google Israel or Google in Farsi, and notice how the entire screen is ‘flipped’ around. Even close buttons on dialogue boxes get flipped (such as this example from GNOME on Linux).

This means you should do the same for all UI inside your Flash application. While it’s a bit of a hassle at first, what I’ve found causes the most problems when doing this is Flash’s Cartesian coordinate system — X and Y works great for left-to-right, but not so for right-to-left.

Align an object to the top left? Easy:
mc_object.y=10;
mc_object.x=10;

But for RTL, we want it on the top right.
mc_object.y=10;
mc_object.x=(stage.stageWidth-10);

When you’re doing that for all your UI elements, it can turn into a real chore. Never mind if you run into stage.Width calculation bugs which do happen when viewing the SWF in various browsers.

What if we were developing a HTML/CSS/Javascript application instead?


#object{position:absolute;top:10px;}
.rtl #object{right:10px;}
.ltr #object{left:10px;}


Much, much easier! (Of course, there are plenty of browser bugs with CSS too, so it’s by no way perfect, but it is much better).

Flash UI Components

Using Flash’s inbuilt UI Components will cause you some problems too. You can move the scrollbar on a scrolling TLF text field to the right at least (you can do this programmatically, too):

Example nine: right-to-left scrollbar (SWF size: 119kb)

But it appears many other components (such as the combobox) have no TLF support or the ability to make them more RTL friendly (all the text below is rendered incorrectly in Arabic):

Example ten: other Flash UI components (SWF size: 49kb)

Conclusion

For anyone looking at creating Rich Internet Applications that will work across different locales, given the growing market acceptance of CSS3, HTML5 and already accepted tools such as jQuery, Flash is looking like a really hard task for such work.

But disregarding all those points, let’s go back to the main thrust of this post: why is Flash so lousy at localisation? There are an estimated 65 million Arabic users online, and if you want to use Flash to provide content for these users, you’re in for a ludicrous development experience. For me, it’s really not good enough. Years ago Flash was targeted as being highly inaccessible, and even though it has made good progress, it’s highly inaccessible in another way: that of localisation.

Download example Flash files from this post (1mb).

What’s next — Ten Google? I seriously doubt that, but surely Channel Ten will follow suit soon. The Big Brother site is currently hosted by 3, perhaps Ten plans to focus more on the mobile market rather than the broader web market? Considering that Big Brother was previously partnered with iPrimus, the shift in sponsor could well indicate this strategy.

Google Calender has finally been released to the public, and it looks very slick. But one surprise with it is that the developers behind it have actually created some valid HTML. Google Calendar even has a doctype! Perhaps the days of Google’s notoriously bad HTML is behind them.

Douglas Bowman was involved in the project, which may have had something to do with it. (Possible quote: "by the way guys, c’mon — your web apps are awesome but your HTML sucks!").

On the functionality side, I’m not sure how much impact Google Calendar will have until it synchs with handheld devices. I’m sure they’ll attempt this in the future, and then along with Gmail, Google might actually give the likes of Outlook a real run for its money. Outlook is hardly the be and end all of desktop communication and organisation — but even Doug Bowman sings Google Calendar’s praise over iCal, which is always getting praise from the Mac camp.

Gmail killer?

Obviously Live Mail is an attempt to catch up with Gmail, which has been wildly popular since arriving two years ago and shaking up the webmail world with its spiffy AJAX-driven interface and huge two gigabytes of space.

The process of moving from normal Hotmail to the new Live Mail is very cumbersome. It initially comprises of several screens for setting user preferences.

The sent mail option is quite absurd. Gmail saves everything – why wouldn’t you want to keep sent messages? Not autosaving sent messages is a horrible feature of the 2mb-per-user webmail days that should have been forgotten long ago. And you only get 30 days!

The colour-scheme option is nice, and thus far Gmail can’t compete – but its a very trivial feature (note: I couldn’t help but pick the worst possible colour scheme, as I did with Google Page Maker).

More AJAXery

The name ‘Live Mail’ alludes to a slick AJAX-driven interface, and Live Mail does deliver on this functionality, even down to a very familiar loading alert — a very atypical swirly loading animation (which looks uncannily similar to the Firefox loading icon).

One nice feature of Live Mail is automatic spell checking, complete with Office-style zig-zag red underlining. Right-clicking on a word presents alternative spelling suggestions as you’d expect.

The ‘To’ field has an excellent contacts list feature. It’s a fairly simple feature that lets you select names from your contacts next to the ‘To’ field. Such functionality, albeit very basic, is surprisingly missing from Gmail. You can also email to a group of contacts as they appear in MSN Messenger, another handy feature.

Cramped layout

While there are some good features in Live Mail, the layout is still quite cramped — very frame-driven, much like the desktop Outlook. There is a lot of wasted space around the banners, which could be tightened up. Unfortunately Microsoft are still sticking with the graphical banner ad, even though Google’s targeted text ads are far less imposing, far less garish and far more relevent to users. And they are still pulling in big bucks.

By moving the search box down and spreading the username and logout options out, Live Mail could save a lot of space.

Conversations?

One disappointment with Live Mail is that there is currently no option to sort mail by conversations (even Outlook 2003 has that feature). For me, this has become by far the most efficient way to organise my email — not only is there the obvious and logical grouping of the same messages, but Gmail also combines all messages into one parent ‘message’, which saves an awful lot of screen space.

But I think the biggest disappointment with Live Mail is that it’s ‘enhanced’ mode is built exclusively for Internet Explorer 6.

It’s 2006, and I can’t believe Microsoft have built this purely for IE6. It’s just sheer laziness. As a developer I spent more time developing for IE6 than any other current browser. But, again, this is only a beta product — hopefully Microsoft will clean up their lax browser support in the future. However, I’m really not tempted in the slightest to switch back to Microsoft for my webmail, as Gmail is still streets ahead.