Category client

The Item pane

Continuing my discussion of the MicroContent client, I want to have a look at the item-pane. Remember an ideal MicroContent client has three panes: a list pane, an item pane and a view pane. The view pane shows the content of a MicroContent item. The item pane shows a summary of multiple MicroContent items. And the list panes presents one or multiple lists with MicroContent items. Again I follow examples as I found them in MacOSX.

The basic format of the item pane is a column-view. Each row stands for a MicroContent item. And each column shows most often the metadata of each MicroContent item. Often a user can specify the sorting of the items by clicking on the header of a column. Sometimes the user can specify which metadata (or data) is presented in a column. Clicking on a row selects the MicroContent item and presents the MicroContent item in the view-pane. There are often keyboard conventions for viewing the next item, such as the down or up arrow.

Under MacOS-X many applications using this Item-pane can be found:

pMpost presents weblog-entries. In my version I have the title, the weblog, the category and publication date as columns. Under the the View menu-item the user can check which metadata is presented as a column.

In MacGourmet my item-pane consists of the name of the recipe, the source, my rating and an icon if an image is present. In this program the user can not change which columns are presented. And this pane is also used to present (and create sublists). I find this an inconsistency of the application.

In NetNewsWire the item-pane (only visible in the traditional view) shows if an item is flagged or not, a a read/not read indicator, the title of a weblog-entry, the creator, the date and the subject. In the View-menu item the user can toggle which columns he wants to see. In addition the user can specify if he wants to see a single line summary and a dateline below each row. This is a nice way to extend the information for each item. This pane is in this application called table. Interestingly this application also has a combined item and view pane, which is called combined view. In this combined view the MicroContent item is presented below the metadata row. An open/close triangle allows the user the hide or unhide the MicroContent.

Another application that uses an item pane is iTunes. In my version I have the song name, duration of song, artist, album and genre as columns. The user can add remove columns with the menu item View options under the Edit menu. As you can see there is still some consistency to be found. Alt-clicking on the titles of the columns allows a user also to select or de-select columns. Double-licking on the song starts ‘viewing’ the MicroContent item (hearing the song). Clicking on arrows behind song-names, artist or album will select the the relevant information in the iTunes MusicStore. The arrows is a new interface convention for accessing related public information and can be used in other programs as well. iTunes has also a special convention for going to the next item: it happens automatically if you checked the song. It is not necessary to push any keys.

AddressBook is another application that presents an item. But this one behaves a bit differently than all the other applications. The items are presented as firstname+lastname or lastname+firstname. The user can change the display and sort order in the Preferences menu-item (yet another place to look). It is not possible to add other fields. So this is basically a single column item-pane.

A column view is not the only way to present items. MicroContent items that contain an image can be presented differently. The iTunes application is the poster child for this. This is the thumbnail view.

iTunes presents the items, the images, on a grid as thumbnails. The size of these thumbnails can be changed through a slider. Clcking on an item reveals some metadata and double clicking allows for editing the image.
Also the new kid on the block, Delicious Library, has an item pane. And interestingly enough they use both a column and a thumbnail view. The user can switch between both view by means of two buttons in the top-left corner of the item pane. The column I use in my application has very small thumbnails for the cover-pages (not really useful), the title, the creator, a five-point rating and whether I read/played the item. A column can be added or removed by alt-clicking on the titles or clicking on the operations icon. The thumbnail view shows the cover-pages of the books as they would be seen on a bookshelf. It is possible to change the size of the bookshelves by means of a slider. Clicking on an item reveals the metadata in the view-pane.

This idea of thumbnails can be extended to about any application. One which comes to mind is the web-browser Omniweb. They do not really follow the three-pane idea, but go a long way. The major part of this application is reserved for the view-pane, it is the pane where you see the HTML-pages. In their latest version they have added a drawer with thumbnails web-pages. Pages can be added to this drawer and by clicking on a thumbnail one switches the viewed page. This is very reminiscent of the item-pane in thumbnail mode. And it is even possible to switch to column-mode. In column mode only the (truncated) title of an item (webpage) is shown.

I think the finder can also be seen as a MicroContent client. Although the idea might be seen as a bit stretched. In this case the MicroContent items are the files in the system (or elsewhere). The finder under MacOS-X knows three viewing modes: icons, lists and columns. In these modes the items are presented. The icons-mode is similar to the thumbnail-mode. It show the icons of files in the system. Using the View Menu-item one can can change the size of the icons by means of a slider. The list-menu reminds of the item column-mode. In my case it presents the file-icon, the file-name, modification date, size and file kind. Again using the View Options one can change the columns one sees. The Finder list-mode also allows to add sublists, which can be opened or close by clicking on the triangle. (I think terminology is getting a bit mixed-up here). The third mode in Finder, the column-mode, is a mixed list/item-pane. I will discuss this one in another post.

I have been trying to show that there are many similarities between MicroContent clients and this might warrant some usability guidelines to make them a bit more similar.

Categories/tags: client
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BookReview clients

Following my review of Delicious Library, I decided to have a look at some other library managers: Books and Booxter. ANd I am mainly interested whether any could qualify as an BookReview client. Well Booxter does not qualify, it has no function to create any HTML or XML file.

Books does a lot better. It is possible to export into XML and HTML and various other formats. If only a real publishing function is available and an updating function, then it would qualify. In Books I also miss the list-pane, as is found in many other MicroContent clients. It is not really a 3-pane app. For Dutch language books Booxter however performed better. Alas it is not really clear what it is doing.

I still like Delicious Library best. If only they would support some publishing and international book databases. I guess I wait a while before I buy this one. There is an Export-function in Delicious Library, but I can not use it in my evaluation version.

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Delicious Library

This is a new application (for MacOS-X) by Delicious Monster that was just released. It is a interesting application from a MicroContent point of view and is related to OpenReviews. This application allows a user to create a library of the books, CD’S, DVD’s or games that he owns. By entering a UPC or ISBN-number the relevant information is entered through a link with Amazon.com. The user can manage who he lends an item to. The application presents a three-pane (three columns) interface reminiscent of other MicroContent clients. The left pane shows the lists, in this case called bookshelves. The middle pane shows the items on the bookshelf, either presented as thumbs of the cover images or as a list. The user can specify what metadata of the books is seen in the list. And the right pane shows the information of a single item. This can be information of the book, aggregate information (recommendations) and user information.

And in the latter information is where the MicroContent comes in. This is information generated by the user. The fact that a user owns a certain item is already information. Adding a rating, review, purchase price, purchase location, etc. is relevant MicroContent. This information might be called an OpenReview of owned (media) items. This application is a great way to manage your media and related MicroContent.

But is tis a MicroContent client? No it is not. It does not allow me to publish my OpenReviews on my weblog. It does not allow me to subscribe to OpenReview feeds. I would love to see my Amazon wish-list on my bookshelf in Delicious Library. And I would love to subscribe to other reviewers. And what about integration with other bookshelves (The Public Library, My Friends, etc) through Rendez-Vous.

Anyway this is a very interesting application, especially for a first version. I am very curious how this application will evolve. I will keep an eye on it and might even use it.

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Microcontent Client

If you follow the principles of DataLibre, then you should own and publish your content yourself. Many participants over at their discussion list seem even to imply that this implies creating your own web-server or at least use your own hosting service. But certainly do not use an aggregator. The risk with any third party is that they may go down and your data with it. One solution is to make regularly your backups or to keep your MicroContent on your PC (and make backups as well).

But if you do something locally you do not have the advantages of a slick web-interface, so another solution is needed. This where the MicroContent client comes into play. Such a MicroContent client can have multiple functions:

• Creation - the client must allow you to create a new MicroContent item. As MicroContent is structured data (and metadata), the appropriate fields must be presented, to be filled-in or changed by the user. What the relevant fields are depends on the MicoContent type;
• Viewing - the MicroContent client allows a user to view the items that he has created;
• Updating - the MicroContent client allows a user to change any item that he has created;
• Deletion - the user should be able to delete any item he has created;
• Publishing - the user should be able to publish an item. This might be on his own server, a hosted server or maybe a third party. This is by the way a fundamental requirement. MicroContent is all about publishing;
• Synchronising - when a new item is added the published information must be changed as well (synchronised);
• Retract - a user might retract an item that he has published;
• Categorize - a user can categorize items into lists, sublists, etc. This will allow a user to filter the items;
• Subscribing - the user can view and subscribe to MicroContent items published on Internet;
• Importing - not all MicroContent will be in the format stored by the application. So ways the convert from public format to internal format must be available. It would be even better when third parties could create the necessary translators;
• Exporting - this is similar to publishing, but it creates files in XML or HTML-format and can be published by hand;
• Saving - it must be easy to save publicly available MicroContent, which is in the internal format;

This is a first list of functionality that I like to see in MicroContent clients. I will update list as I continue to analyse possible MicroContent clients.

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Client View pane

A few blog-entries back I discussed the Microcontent-client. I would like to focus now on one of the three panes: The MicroContent view pane. This pane allows the user to view a single MicroContent item. In the case op an OpenRecipe, this would be a single recipe. In the case of a OpenBlog it would be a single entry. For audio the controls could be presented with some metadata (album cover, music category, etc.). And for a person it would be his address card. And in general for any file, it is the preview pane. And for a web-page it is the browser-page.

But not in all cases presenting just a single entry is useful from a usability point of view. The weblog-reader NetNewsWire created a solution for this: the combined view. In this presentation the listing and the viewing pane are combined into a single pane. This pane can be sorted on the metadata of each listing. All the entries of the listing are presented vertically. And the user can scroll through all entries. For blog-entries this is a very useful view (I prefer it). However for recipes this might not be very useful. For pictures it would be a single image, but then the slide show might be a better way to present a list of pictures.

It becomes more interesting if we dive into the technology behind this View pane. True MicroContent would consists of a RSS/XML like file, as is the case with blog-entries. It turns out that also the recipes in MacGourmet are also XML-files. They used the Property-List solution offered by Apple. And XML-files can be presented through a (modern) web-browser. But then a CSS-file must be present. Usually this CSS-file is hidden somewhere in the software of the client. However NetNewsWire decided to open this up and now anyone can write a CSS-file to present the blog-entries. MacGourmet opened up a little bit, by predefining several colour schemes. But they could open up that part as well.

And Omniweb adds per URL(?) settings for a web-page. Why not extend this idea to all MicroContent clients. For example a CSS-file for OpenRecipe desserts different from Main Courses. Surely there are still enough ideas in this space.

That leaves many closed applications (at least in the Mac-space), such as iPhoto, AddressBook, Finder, etc.

At least this gives an idea how a generic DLA client would look like: RSS+XML+CSS. And everything is presented through a browser engine. A generic viewing pane could mix MicroContent types. Probably not useful for the user, but possible. One might view a web-browser as a generic viewer. I assume however that each MicroContent-type will get its own client.

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Microcontent Interfaces

One of the most difficult things will be the creation of an interface for the creation of Microcontent. How can you create something that is easy to use for an enduser. I am trying to find some examples for such interfaces.

I can think of the interface of pMpost, the client for the pMachine weblog software. The basic window shows five fields which a user can fill: a title field and three other fields. By selecting the Custom Fields button, another three fields can be specified. It is up to the user how he interprets these fields. It is a very simple structure and allows for some simple structuring. The drawback is that much is left up to the user. The interface is extremely simple, just fields. There are no substructures or whatever.

Another example that I came across is the interface of the AddressBook application under Mac OS-X. It has a simple interface to add new items to an address card. With a + you add a new field to an address card. And in the case of a real world address this translates to a 4-field address structure. For each field the user can change the label. Thus for the telephone number you can select home, work, mobile, etc. It really reminds of an underlying keyword/value database. It is however easy to use. And might a way to create simple microcontent types.

And there are of course the various services that allow you to create structured microcontent, such as Qlogger.         

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Microcontent Clients

With the release of MarsEdit another client for weblogs is on the market. I am a very happy weblog-client user (pMpost) and use it for all my weblogs. I was wondering whether any of these clients is useful for Microcontent. In principle they are only geared to weblogs, i.e. the weblog editor offers only a limited number of fields such as title, date, description, categories and trackback-id. This limit was one of the reasons I did not look at MarsEdit. ecto by the way seems to do a better job. It does work with pMachine and all my weblogs were found, but I have only 3 description-line fields available.

My weblog-service, pMachine, allows to have up to 6 description-like fields. I use this heavily in order to separate different fields. It is alas not yet official Microcontent, but it goes a bit in the right direction. I would like to change the tags in the RSS and HTML-output and much more.

Anyway Microcontent clients is the way to go.

Categories/tags: client , microcontent; client; weblog;
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