“Bread crumbs”(perhaps how you got here)

Saved, Part 2

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Okay, okay. I gave up on NetObjects Fusion 11 and its fancy looks. Back to plain-Jane, zombie Trellix aka CuteSITE Builder.

The fact was that it took far too long to do anything in NetObjects Fusion. Although I had other important projects to do, I rebuilt the whole Web site, including the most difficult thing, making it look anything like stylish by the standards of 2008, in about a day's work.

And I know that Trellix will give me a lot more natural and direct interface.

Well, if you wanted looks, "this ain't the place."

Worse than the appearance problem, though, is that in NetObjects Fusion it is hard to see just where you really are in the site. The editor's navigation tools are not good enough.

At first, if you look, it seems that Trellix and Fusion have the same basic tool: a hierarchical chart or map. But with Trellix, the map is right there, easy to manipulate. Admittedly, Trellix's navigation buttons and lists are pretty drab compared to what you get with Fusion, but they are also far easier to create and use. When you are editing in Trellix, the navigation structure works essentially exactly the same as it will when you publish the site.

This is vital. Not only should a device have good affordances, it should also have honest affordances. When you pick up a coffee mug by the handle, the handle works (or should work, if the mug's not broken) exactly as you expect. Moreover, the handle stays put and is available again when you need it.

The same should always be true of any software: when you manipulate something, the entry to the task should look and act exactly as you think it looks and acts.

This is true in Trellix. If your cursor is somewhere, you can type there. Not so in NetObjects Fusion. If your cursor is in the middle of a page, you can't necessarily type there - probably you have to go through the extra step of putting a "text" frame in the page. Even then, in Trellix you can drag and drop a URL directly from your favorite Web browser (well, most of them; I seem to recall that there's something wrong with older versions of Opera, but who cares?) into your typed paragraph, and you get the correct result. "In theory," as the phrase goes, you can do the same thing with NetObjects Fusion, but it is sure hard to bring off. Creating a link in Fusion takes about ten times more time than it does in Trellix.

This consideration, that affordances should be honest and stable, is true in many areas of life. Have you ever had a personal relationship with a person who is "sensitive" or just plain "snarly?" You say one thing to that person at one time, and you get a certain reaction. Try it again under apparently identical circumstances, and you get your head bitten off. Or try your old car that's on its last legs - it used to be true that when you put your foot on the brake pedal, the car slowed down or even stopped. Now the brakes don't work ... Oops!

 All text on this page is the work of J W Durham and is licensed only under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Other licensing terms may be available. E-mail me