It don't come easy ... you know it don't come easy

Issue 18 of The Sensible Internet Design Newsletter follows.

As always, you can catch up on back issues in the archive, or subscribe free to get future mailings. Read on for this issue in its entirety ...

It don't come easy ... you know it don't come easy

Little tolerance for Plug 'n' Fry ... less tolerance for plug-in pops ... and only the tiniest windows of patience for Net designers.

Last week I theorized that little efficiencies in large quantities become unmanageable complexity.

This week I crave a few of those little efficiencies in my computing life, after dealing with a switch in broadband providers and wayward media players on my own machines, and hearing a colleague describe his nightmarish attempts just to get a computer game to run.

Let's face it. Poor Internet user experience is a problem. But it pales next to the fundamental difficulties we all face just getting our computers to work well enough, consistently enough, often enough, to connect. And everyday users' computing problems make Internet usability even more crucial.

Consider these examples, which surely resemble episodes endured by many people at all levels of computer expertise:

Exhibit A: A colleague purchased a war/history/strategy game for his computer last week. It would not run on his machine, though it was a fairly contemporary Windows PC. It turns out the game is designed to work with only two brands of video/audio driver cards. So he found one of the two at a local retailer for a fair price, and with a rebate, to boot. Great, right?

Wrong. He took the card home, opened the case on his PC (stop right there -- honestly, doesn't it seem odd that people who would never attempt to change their own oil are compelled, even expected, by hardware manufacturers to install sensitive electronic components amid a jungle of equally sensitive circuit boards? But I digress ...), and snapped in the card. Great, right?

Wrong. The computer would no longer boot. My colleague brought the sick machine into the office, and persuaded one of our top-notch systems administrators to rebuild the operating system for him. The sysadmin is the kind of guy who always does this stuff correctly. Great, right?

Wrong. The sysadmin took out the card, reinstalled the OS, and the machine booted. He then reinstalled the card according to instructions, and it fried the operating system again. Now my colleague owns a computer with a fragile operating system, and a game and video card that will not work on it.

Exhibit B: My family is fortunate to live in a community where we have a choice of broadband Internet service providers -- especially since the provider we've used for more than a year recently seemed to fall into, well, less than satisfactory customer service practices.

So we switched to a different provider, using a different technology. I run a wireless home network that supports three computers, so I was concerned that it would be a hassle to switch access wires, modems, I.P. addresses and such. That part, in hindsight, was easy.

The problem came with the software bundle the instructions insisted we install on at least one of the machines to configure our access. It was designed for a single computer to address the broadband modem directly, not for home networking. Naturally, it could not detect the modem on the other side of the network router. Worse, it installed browsers, media players and preference settings I did not want, and adding further insult, it made those items the defaults.

It took an extra hour to dismantle this damage. I then used another computer, sans the offending software, to access my home network router directly, quickly resetting it to see the modem, handle the different protocol and refresh its network address. From that point on, all computers on the network had proper access.

If I had read the instructions on using this provider's service with a home network, I would have known I could and should skip the software installation. The trouble was, those instructions were not included in the installation kit -- they were available only online.

Do you sense a catch-22 coming on? Right you are. I couldn't get to the networking instructions without Internet access, in turn because I couldn't configure the modem without installing the software bundle, which effectively prevented Internet access until it was removed.

Exhibit C: Real One Player will not cease or desist in its delivery of unwanted pop-up messages, which 99 times out of 100 are reminders to download meaningless, incremental upgrades. I know I'm not alone complaining about this.

And Real isn't the only culprit -- in the Windows world, it seems every utility and browser plug-in wants space in the System Tray (that little group of icons on the right side of your Start Menu). With some applications, the installation script asks you if you want to put a "Fast Start" or a "Helper" in the System Tray, so the software's toolsets will be more readily available.

To a software/utility manufacturer, gaining System Tray space is even better than gaining "default" status, because programs loaded in the System Tray overlay the operating system -- often prompting and interacting with users even at times when they otherwise wouldn't think about those tools.

That's OK, you say. That is, until these little scripts begin to slow the boot-up cycle of your computer to a crawl, and begin to hog its memory until you can no longer run Word and Outlook at the same time.

Then, just try to remove a System Tray item permanently. No two are installed the same way. And it's hard, even for experienced users, to be sure you're not removing things you want in the process of removing start-up scripts you never use.

Does anyone do this right?

When you buy software, such as a game, do you pore over the system requirements hoping they match your vague recollections of your own hardware specs? Wouldn't it be great to have confidence it would just run seamlessly when you get it home?

When you sign up for Internet access, don't you hope against hope that it'll just work when you plug the wires in? And man, wouldn't life be grand if browser plug-ins and other small software utilities came up only when you needed them, and freed your computer's resources for other tasks when you were done with them?

Does any personal computing experience come close to this little dream?

I can already hear Apple zealots saying Macs would never have the video card problem my colleague encountered. That's true. Apple hardware is generally predictable and reliable. Mac-compatible peripherals often just work from the moment you plug them in. It is easier to tell which Mac software works with which Mac computers. And the new Mac OS X is Apple's most stable system yet.

Whether they should or not, however, comparatively few people own Macs. Business computing is a Windows world, and many long-time computer users choose Windows for home because that's what they know. So they're stuck with serious incompatibilities and all these pieces of software competing for screen space and users' attention.

One usability challenge at a time, please

No wonder Internet site visitors have so little patience with interfaces they don't understand, or navigation that does not lead to what it promises. Just think of what they've been through just to get to your Web site -- any Web site.

Designers can still succeed within this limited patience threshold -- perhaps even extend it -- by using top-level interface architectures that offer no further resistance to users' efforts. For example:

• Go for maximum browser and OS compatibility at least on the first page that most first-time visitors will see: the home page. Even if some elements of your site's content will require media players or other browser plug-ins, introduce them a screen or two below the home page, preferably in a context that also explains the plug-ins and effectively introduces the specific content elements that call for them. It's forbidding to open your site with a splash screen that insists the only way to experience the wonders of your creativity is to go get a half-dozen plug-in upgrades.
• Don't link to a broken promise. The cliche example is an awful "Under Construction" page behind a link to a new site section. But it's almost as bad to put out a link that implies a certain depth of content or frequency of updating, only to click through to sparse, out-of-date material. And it's also offensive to link to something specific but try to divert attention repeatedly along the way (certain forms of interstitial advertising, used to excess, have this effect -- though I have no beef against moderate use of interstitials). The link itself is the promise, and whatever you put at the other end of that link better fulfill that promise.
• Organize your navigation immaculately and consistently, and clean house once in a while. The older a site design is, the more likely it is to experience "link creep." Any given design is conceived to handle a certain volume of navigation links, then, inevitably, the site grows and the navigation tree starts to bend under the weight. The more nav links you provide, the harder it becomes to communicate any sense of priority.

And when you are so tired of designing that you just can't think about it anymore, try to remember that feeling -- because plenty of everyday Internet visitors feel that way about their computers by the time they even get to your site.

Holiday break

The Sensible Internet Design Letter will not be published Dec. 25 or Jan. 1. But you'll still hear from us next Wednesday, Dec. 18, and again starting Jan. 8.