Checkboxes. A Response.

For those of you that have been pining for my third entry in this completely unloved blog, the time has arrived. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. I must say first, that for some reason or another, I have been recently paying more attention to the ramblings of the local IxDA crowd. This is not to say that I am becoming one, nor that I feel compelled to spend my free time writing books about the things that I take for granted, or create on a daily basis, but I have been reading a bit more on the topic, and between winces at the analysis of the simple, I take in some good... and I feel mildly less jaded.

My colleague recently penned a piece regarding checkboxes in RIA applications that I felt I needed to respond to... In part because I am now the butt of jokes around the Laszlo world headquarters, but also because I have a fiver riding on her forecast: She believes (with enough tenacity to bet said $5) that Outlook will have checkboxes for multiple selection within 5 years.... I, and some of my dear design cohorts lean the opposite direction. Partially, at least for me (I can't speak for the team) this is derived from a distaste, which borders on fear, of devolution.

In the last 6 years at Laszlo, I have, again and again, checked in with all manners of marketing, sales, engineering, and management, to plot our course. I have been a staunch advocate of the RIA, and in many cases an architect, since a time before such a term was minted in the design-career space. I firmly believe in the evolution of user experience, and in the slow-by-internet-standards, but light-speed-fast-by-any-other-standard of the internet... Which is why I took Sarah's wager.

The truth is we already have checkboxes (and every other HTML-mandated contrivance). There are NO mainstream communication products (that I am aware of) that replicate an HTML experience without an HTML equivalent. What this boils down to is a fork in the stream. There is not one major ISP or CSP that has decided to forego the fork and forge ahead to the Webtop land of desktop equivalent interaction. Why is this? For exactly the points that Sarah makes in her entry. There are at least 15 years of precedence that need to be migrated. This does not happen overnight. That is understood, and fine... but the fall-back is readily available. Can't hack drag and drop? Have issues w/ shift+select? Then HTML is your friend. Be there. Enjoy the mildew.

For the rest... for the kids... even for those that managed to exist pre-web-introduction, or post-web-introduction, on their desktop, dragging files from one folder to another, shift-selecting multiple files, etc... I have a place online that you will cherish... If my employers will let me.

I am fighting an uphill battle. This issue is a future issue. We want our clients to stop offering HTML mail and switch entirely to an RIA approach. This necessitates a middle ground. A concession. This means that we need to straddle the past and future. It is an interesting and aggravating challenge, and one that (for the now) does not matter.

I want the cleanest, most consistent, simplest interface design possible. I have spent the last ten years promoting such a thing where I could make headway. I want evolution. I want people to make a small leap from the things they do intuitively, daily, on their desktops, to the internet. A tall order, I am now convinced.

I do believe, however, that in internet-time, this is only a stone's throw. This is the main reason I so adamantly oppose the coddling that the dual paradigm of checkbox + shift-click suggests. Something I picked up from Darwin.