{"id":2951,"date":"2011-06-06T19:18:31","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T19:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2011-06-06T19:18:31","modified_gmt":"2011-06-06T19:18:31","slug":"a_little_too_ha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2951","title":{"rendered":"A Little Too Hands-On"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest news out of Microsoft and Apple should put to rest any doubts that tech companies are going all-in with touch-based interfaces. Microsoft recently offered a preview of Windows 8<\/a>, which features customizable “tiles” instead of the traditional desktop environment. The “tiles” are part of Microsoft’s strategy to market Windows 8 as a tablet-friendly operating system. Instead of pointing and clicking, the demo emphasizes swiping and “snapping”. And then there’s Apple, which unveiled Lion, the next version of its desktop operating system<\/a>. Lion features plenty of gesture-based commands that mimic the gestures used on iPhones and iPads.<\/p>\n

I’m sure plenty of people will find these interfaces intuitive and useful, but I worry that these companies will start incorporating touch-based functions that have no keyboard or mouse equivalent. Right now, I can perform almost any Windows function that anyone else can. Will that still be true when I upgrade to Windows 8 or 9? Both Apple and Microsoft have been great advocates and enablers of computer accessibility. I don’t expect that to change overnight, but they may need a gentle reminder that user interfaces should be flexible enough to meet the needs and preferences of the user. Plenty of consumers, gimp and able-bodied alike, simply have no use for a gesture-based and are quite happy with the mouse cursor. Don’t take it away from us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest news out of Microsoft and Apple should put to rest any doubts that tech companies are going all-in with touch-based interfaces. Microsoft recently offered a preview of Windows 8, which features customizable “tiles” instead of the traditional desktop environment. The “tiles” are part of Microsoft’s strategy to market Windows 8 as a tablet-friendly […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-LB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}