The Mobile App Design Tail Wags the Desktop Software Design Dog 183
CowboyRobot writes "The metaphors and conventions of mobile apps on phones and tablets are now driving the design of desktop software. For example, dialog boxes in typical desktop software used to be complex, requiring lots of interaction. But these are now typically much simpler with far fewer options in a single pane. Drop-down menus are evolving, too. The former style of multiple cascading menus is being replaced. Drop-downs today have a smaller range of options (due to mobile screens being so small and the need to have the entries big enough that a finger touch can select it), and they never use the cascading menu. In Web-based apps, the mobile metaphors are finding greater traction as well. One need only look at the new Google Mail (GMail) interface and see how it's changed over the last year to view the effects of this new direction: All icons are monochrome, the number of buttons is very limited, and there's a More button that keeps the additional options off the main screen."
Re:nihao bitches!1 (Score:2, Funny)
Wrong thread again, twinkie.
I know the Slashdot interface is particularly complex, but we're supposed to be the top of the heap.
Re:Honestly.... (Score:3, Funny)
If you handed me one in 1980, I would have believed you were a time traveler or an alien.
And you would have been right about the first thing.
I don't know the GP about the second thing, though.
Re:Dumbing down (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Dumbing down (Score:2, Funny)
Now you make me feel bad that us old-fucks invented the Internet and solid-state devices for you ungrateful punks.
MY 80 year-old mom has no problem with her devices. Maybe YOUR mom is just stupid.
Now excuse this 52 year-old sysadmin as I get a batch of new Windows 8 tablets joined to the domain and VPN so I can send them off to China with our aerospace engineers.