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24 Mar 2006
MicroContent Browser
After analysing many MicroContent Clients, I came to the conclusion that these application all look very much like the Finder, i.e. the file browser under MacOSX. In fact the Finder gets a score of 51 points, which puts it at the fourth place on my list with 33 Clients.
The first conclusion one can draw from this, is that most of the MicroContent Clients are lacking in functionality. Even the Finder does a better job, at least at some functions. And only three Clients do better than the Finder. One of main reasons is that these Clients allow for easy access to MicroContent on other locations that the computer. Importing an exporting MicroContent should be handled better as well. So there is still a lot of work to do for MicroContent Client developers.
The second conclusions bears on the similarity of MicroContent Clients. Why are there all these Clients in the first place? Why isn't there a single MicroFinder, which we can use for all types of MicroContent Items/Files? The Finder (with all its drawbacks) gives an idea how MicroContent could be handled. The MicroFinder can take many cues from all these MicroContent Clients that I have analysed. By the way didn't BeOS do something like this? A MicroFinder Client should basically work around the metadata of a file, just as the Finder does. However the MicroFinder should be able to recognise the structure of the Item as well. It should be able to know that a recipe has ingredients, that an image can have a location, etc. This would then allow the user to do a search on ingredients, which would result in recipes. One should be able to search for Items around a location, whether these are in photo's, videos, podcasts or descriptions of a touristy places.
What is missing from the current version of MacOSX is the OLE (or what was that called again?) functions that could be found with NextSTEP. It would be a great way of connecting MicroContent Items. Still waiting for someone to reinvent this.