I've been thinking a fair amount about how to connect the semantics of web browsing with shared 3spaces.
As an example, consider the humble back button. Users expect that each press of the back button will step them through their browser history, regardless of whether they've submitted forms or used sites which fudge the concept of a "page" with Flash, Ajax, or Applets. If you've been wandering around in a shared 3space for twenty minutes, what should happen when you press the back button? Should your POV shift back along the 3D path you've taken? What is the granularity of the history? Are its units ones of time, space, dwell time, or 3space landmark? Or, is it a continuous path? Is the beginning of the history at your entrance point to this 3space, or at the entrance to the first 3space in this browser session? Where is the balance between an understandable user concept of "back" and an engineer-able artifact of a back button and history?
Now consider this level of complexity when applied to all of the core concepts of a modern browser: back, forward, location field, stop, reload, search, bookmark bar, bookmark hierarchy, feeds, plugins, status bar, scroll bars, partial failure, quirks mode, tabs...
If this hasn't already been the topic for a PhD thesis, I imagine it soon will be.
Comments