Thursday, September 01, 2011

Stupidest Idea of 2010

While I am at the zenith of my curmodgeonliness, I'm reminded I never got around to awarding the Stupidest Idea of 2010:  Animating e-book pages to look like real pages turning.

Yes, it looks really neat, but it's dumb.  I hope the programmers remembered to add code to make the pages slowly turn yellow and then randomly delete themselves from the e-book as years go by.  Maybe they never got around to that because they're off re-programming terminal apps to scroll text by at 300 baud.

Again, I appreciate the artistry, but having seen it, it's then about the most annoying thing I've experienced in a user interface.  Please, at least provide a way to turn this animation off.

This effect should be one of those little novelty apps your friends download and say “Ha Ha, Look at This.”  You look at it and reply,  “Neat.”  Then you never have to see it again.