Mobile devices are fantastically horrible objects, and you have to blame the deliberately hobbled, crippled nature of touch screens for many, many things that suck when (trying) to use one.
My fat fingers are too stupid to learn how to type on soft keyboards, and that's the end of it. Even when turning on pointer position feedback that shows the path and position of the cursor, to reveal what the interface THINKS I'm trying to do, it's usually a little off because my fingers are soft fleshy blobs. Soft keyboards are one of the more reasonable examples of touch screen software, and there are many varieties, and they get a lot of truly professional attention. Seriously, try using an ordinary desktop keyboard with a water balloon. It yields poor results.
Touch screen experiences suck. Add to the fact that many devices include resolution independent interfaces, and there becomes this hellish mix of software controlled guess work that stands as an insurmountable obstacle between me and the delivery of actual professional work, beyond typing an e-mail. They will never yield the pixel perfect pointing precision of a mouse.
Touchscreens are prompting the destruction and reinvention of lots of things that work fine with any Keyboard/Video/Mouse interface, are twisted into horrid mutant abominations that make me want to commit suicide on touch devices. Everyone is bending over backwards to coddle and baby people who own these status symbols du jour.
That being said, there needs to be a line drawn on re-designs of perfectly useful software, in the name of the holy tablet/smartphone/touchscreen complex.
Case in point: Bookmarks & RSS
In Firefox, this is one of the key features that has me hooked for life (while it remains in place). In every mobile device I have ever seen, RSS is an abomination, and I refuse to embrace it. Internet Explorer is too awful in general, so don't even bring it up (I won't get into why Chrome is also a non-starter, but I'll just mention that in-browser authentication is point-blank wrong, and I don't like signing into my browser). But it's perfect in Firefox, and they shouldn't touch it. If RSS ever disappeared from Firefox, I would simply never look at another feed again. I would not use a stand-alone RSS program to consume and digest RSS feeds.
RSS is a key component of bookmarability in Firefox, and it ain't broke. Not on desktops and laptops. I hope these kinds of details aren't lost in the rush to compete with amateur crapware that we find on mobile devices.
My fat fingers are too stupid to learn how to type on soft keyboards, and that's the end of it. Even when turning on pointer position feedback that shows the path and position of the cursor, to reveal what the interface THINKS I'm trying to do, it's usually a little off because my fingers are soft fleshy blobs. Soft keyboards are one of the more reasonable examples of touch screen software, and there are many varieties, and they get a lot of truly professional attention. Seriously, try using an ordinary desktop keyboard with a water balloon. It yields poor results.
Touch screen experiences suck. Add to the fact that many devices include resolution independent interfaces, and there becomes this hellish mix of software controlled guess work that stands as an insurmountable obstacle between me and the delivery of actual professional work, beyond typing an e-mail. They will never yield the pixel perfect pointing precision of a mouse.
Touchscreens are prompting the destruction and reinvention of lots of things that work fine with any Keyboard/Video/Mouse interface, are twisted into horrid mutant abominations that make me want to commit suicide on touch devices. Everyone is bending over backwards to coddle and baby people who own these status symbols du jour.
That being said, there needs to be a line drawn on re-designs of perfectly useful software, in the name of the holy tablet/smartphone/touchscreen complex.
Case in point: Bookmarks & RSS
In Firefox, this is one of the key features that has me hooked for life (while it remains in place). In every mobile device I have ever seen, RSS is an abomination, and I refuse to embrace it. Internet Explorer is too awful in general, so don't even bring it up (I won't get into why Chrome is also a non-starter, but I'll just mention that in-browser authentication is point-blank wrong, and I don't like signing into my browser). But it's perfect in Firefox, and they shouldn't touch it. If RSS ever disappeared from Firefox, I would simply never look at another feed again. I would not use a stand-alone RSS program to consume and digest RSS feeds.
RSS is a key component of bookmarability in Firefox, and it ain't broke. Not on desktops and laptops. I hope these kinds of details aren't lost in the rush to compete with amateur crapware that we find on mobile devices.