Full On Design

2009 has been a somewhat interesting year for the internet; it’s become more mobile & more user friendly. However here are a few ideas I have had over the year, which I would like to see arrive in 2010.

Video Stream Caching

One of the big annoyances I have with streaming video files (normally on websites such as YouTube & Megavideo) is whenever I go to jump to another section of the video I lose what I currently have already loaded. It would be really useful if I could quickly go back to the section I’ve previously loaded.

This is a mock up I done, the video I used is from RayWilliamJohnson

I’m quite sure this would need to be implemented by the software, but I can’t see how it would be difficult to add.

Facebook – Pop-up chat

Pop-ups are a double edge sword; on the one hand they have been used incorrectly and become an utter annoyance. But on the other, they also can drastically improve a users experience with a website. For example the Facebook chat system is very inconvenient as I have to be looking at a Facebook page to talk to people. On a big screen this might not be a big issue, but on a small screen this makes it surprisingly difficult to  multi-task.

Oh noes! I can’t see the chat & watch the video

However, if Facebook make the chat system as a desktop application or just available in a pop-up I suspect that would solve issue.

JavaScript Library Integrated into browsers

It seems silly that I have to keep re-downloading the same file (A Javascript Library) to make a webpage more exciting. I would love to see not just jQuery, but most JavaScript libraries integrated into browsers (maybe as a add-on or something?) to speed up the download times of webpages.

On the other hand, it could be time to consider a new browser based language which is designed to make surfers & developers lives easier. For example adding a new attribute to html forms which allowed for browser specific (so people with screen readers will not be disadvantaged) validation.

<form>
<fieldset>
<label>Phone Number:
<input name="price" type="text" value="090 111 050" /></label>
</fieldset>
</form>

OpenID/Facebook Connect – More widely adopted

I hate having to sign up to websites, especially when I could just as easily use a login details from a single source. It would be really cool if more websites allowed for a “one click registration” option.

Adobe Flash – Video Player Standardization

One of my biggest pet hates is going onto a nice website just to find features I expect to find, or actions I believe are normal are just not present on the video players. For example I think it is normal for a click on a video to mean “pause” and a double click to go to full screen mode. I think this is just something Web Developers need to consider.