Channel 4′s 4oD was down last Friday night at 11:30pm. This really isn’t that surprising it was just after the latest episode of Peep Show had aired, and I imagine thousands of people over the UK were wanting to watch it after getting home that evening.

Thankfully it was up again on Saturday morning and I downloaded the new episode without a hitch. Of course until I tried to watch it around 12pm, when quite possibly everyone else burned the night before were attempting to download the episode yet again.

Now this is where DRM (and bad design on the developer’s part) really bugs me: the video file was on my hard drive somewhere in some mystical format and location, but without being able to connect to the 4oD site, I couldn’t watch it. Madness. Surely it’s easy enough to change the service so you can watch downloads offline, but if this was a torrent download (or any regular download) then this offline business wouldn’t even be an issue.

In similar news, the BBC’s iPlayer is coming later this year, apparently.

Manually entering dates is also frustrating as some part of the Javascript intermittently clears the field when changing focus between the fields. Initially I honestly couldn’t get a date in. I’ve since tried again and it worked (barely). Just as well there’s a fairly obvious Reservations link in the top bar.

By the way, anyone know of any good hotels in Calgary?

However, as I said in the last post, I am still compelled to check Hotmail now and again as I still have a few emails of importance coming in between the far more steady stream of spam. Clearing my inbox today I noticed the Live Mail team have changed the way the inbox interface is laid out. The main difference is that the checkbox for each item now shares its place with the new mail icon:

Basically both icons toggle depending on whether the email is new and/or selected. In practice this is just really bemusing to use. If you want to select messages to delete or move, there is no obvious checkbox. When you work out they’re hiding between mail icons (emphasis on hidden here), the actual task of selecting the check boxes requires a high degree of accuracy: the checkbox is sitting on anchor block linking to the email message, so if you’re slightly off target with the small checkbox you end up opening a message as opposed to selecting it.

And my last gripe is that the checkbox/mail icon column doesn’t line up with the master select checkbox in the top left corner. There is actually room for the checkbox to sit next to the mail icon and be underneath this master selector. Wouldn’t that make far more sense?

I don’t know what the rationale behind the design of this is, but the caveat here is that this is a beta product after all. Although I made that point in my last blog entry as well, after pointing out Live Mail was purely IE6 (now IE7 as well). Windows Live Mail now loads in Firefox 2.0, although load is a pretty abstract concept:

24 errors/504 warnings? Nice.

And for the record, Live Mail is still long way off the simplicity and usability of Gmail.

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.

…well-equipped to welcome visitors with disabilities. Our facilities include: lifts, wheelchair access, adapted toilets, and audio guides for selected exhibitions.

The irony of all this is that in the HTML version of the site (as opposed to the Flash) this text is rendered in a GIF with no alt text (and not considering the fact the site launches several pop-up windows). So unlucky if you’re visually impaired.

Or does this raise the question of whether you could truly appreciate a Design Museum if you were visually impaired? Or an art gallery? Or museums in general?

Regardless I do love the irony of disability services information appearing in probably the most inaccessible way possible.

I like watching videos through Flash. The Flash plugin seems to hog far less memory than Windows Media, Quicktime or Realplayer. It’s generally less obtrusive; the only big spinning logos before the video starts playing as that of the author or studio (if there are even any), again in contrast to the big three players mentioned.

CNET plays this factor up:

In several demonstrations of Flash video in recent months, Macromedia has mocked the experience that some Web surfers go through when trying to access RealNetworks or Windows Media video clips. In the demonstration, the people trying to access the video are confronted with dialogue boxes prompting the download of large players. Then they have to choose bandwidth speeds and other options.

Flash video, by contrast, is “playerless.” That means video clips play embedded in the Web page, and Flash developers can design their own interfaces and determine their own buffers and other technical settings.

The last paragraph really sets Flash up as a double-edged sword. It has low visibility as a plugin, but the lack of interface (which could easily be as unobtrusive as the plugin) is a real problem. I cannot believe Flash has been out for so long with its woefully inadequate movie controls.

I can rewind and play, but there is no pause functionality or any semblence to the controls that come with the likes of Windows Media Player, Quicktime, Real and even your domestic DVD and VCR players. Unless the developer has included a set of controls, if you missed something in a Flash movie, chances are you have to start all over again. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I had to start Homestar Runner clips from the beginning on my lunch break after being interrupted by my boss – my desire for a simple ‘pause’ button disappearing into oblivion. Breeze presentations, a new product for webcasting incorporating Flash technology, has these controls embedded into the Flash movie. Better, but still, how hard is it to give the Flash player a stock-standard set of movie controls?

The CNET quote creates another problem: designer’s creating their own interfaces. This is bad news for users, who will now have to contend with a multitude of differing interfaces, all with minor variations, icons and nuances.

How long before Macromedia puts a simple movie control in with the Flash player? Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe it’s to do with potential inteference with timelining and action scripting. A fair point, but surely including a default control interface could at least be an optional feature when creating movies? Macromedia has code on its site for creating these controls, but it still baffles me as to why these aren’t a default feature bundled with the player as opposed to each SWF.

Jakob Nielsen touched on some of the issues raised here in his in his infamous 2000 rant “Flash: 99% Bad”. Macromedia later hired him as a consultant to improve Flash usability; so they must be aware of this problem.

Please someone tell me the incredibly obvious reason there aren’t bundled timeline controls in Flash – because I can’t understand its absence.