The random utterances of David Arno

From http://www.yourdictionary.com/clunky

clunky (kluŋk′ē)

adjective clunkier clunk′·i·er, clunkiest clunk′·i·est

1. clumsy or awkward
2. not stylish or attractive
3. making a clunking sound

First of all, let me make clear that I have an iPhone and I love it. Secondly, I feel it is stylish and attractive and have never heard it make a clunking sound. By “clunky” I mean it is “clumsy or awkward”.

So having made that point, let me move on to address why I claim the iPhone’s user interface is clunky.

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Four years ago I was a web developer using VBScript and ASP, with a tiny bit of Flash occasionally thrown in. Prior to web development, I’d not done much else with my career aside from a great many years of C/C++ programming, some lex and yacc work and writing Korn Shell scripts. Then two things happened to my career which seem to shift it up a gear.

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“When is Flash coming to the iPhone?” seems to be a commonly asked question of Adobe. It’s clear from the likes of Lee Brimelow that it is a question that causes great consternation within that company. They want Flash on the iPhone, of that there is little doubt. Flash is available on Windows, OS X and Linux and – assuming all goes well with the Open Screen Project – it will be available within the browsers of all smart phones bar the iPhone later this year. As a Flex developer and an iPhone user, I guess this should worry me. To be honest though, it really doesn’t. In fact, it fills me with hope for the future.

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Flash Builder has a great selection of new features, such as new workflow integration with Flash Catalyst and Professional, improved debugger, refractoring and profiling tools and great data services integration. Beyond these headline features though, there are some nice little enhancements to the developer experience that seem to have been overlooked by most.

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A few days back, the web was a awash with headlines that Silverlight was coming to the iPhone. Behind those headlines was the story that Silverlight video was the only part of Silverlight that was coming to the iPhone. The details of the story appearing to be that IIS was going to support converting Silverlight video into a form that could be displayed on the iPhone.

Yesterday I got into a discussion with Aral Balkan on Twitter over whether or not it was appropriate to call it Silverlight video as the video is displayed using the <video/> HTML 5 tag. In order to better defend my stance that it was, I decided to investigate the matter further to gain a proper understanding of what was going on. In the process, I had to do an about-turn on my position, and conclude Aral was right.

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In memory of the sad death of Freddie Mercury 18 years ago, the Muppet Show creators have produced a Muppet version of what is arguably Queen’s greatest song: Bohemian Rhapsody.

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In a clear bid to turn Ubuntu into a serious contender for the mainstream market, Gimp is to be removed from future releases. Gimp epitomises everything that is wrong about Linux, with its “feature rich” functionality taking precedence over usability (or “UX” as it’s fashionably called these days). I can honestly say Gimp is the single most difficult-to-use piece of software I’ve used and it was instrumental in driving me toward using Windows many years ago.

For Linux to become mainstream, it needs to ditch the quest for ever more complex features and instead become simple to use. This seems an alien concept to most Linux folk, but it is good to see that Canonical seem to have got it. Now if only they could ditch that shit-brown default theme and get a contemporary look and feel to compete with Windows 7 and OS X, then they just might break into the OS mass-market.

For more details on the reasoning behind ditching Gimp, see this excellent article on Ars Technica.

In a recent post, I highlighted the arse-about-face nature of the way sorting works with the Flex DataGrid component. As one comment put it, it is synonymous with moving your car wheels to set the steering wheel position.

In response to that, I have created a simple extension to the DataGrid component. It is called AutoSortDataGrid and it adds two properties to DataGrid: sortColumn and sortDirection. These simple additions enable one to specify the initial sort state of a datagrid, and no additional code is required on the user’s part.

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Whilst smartphones are great for accessing the web when out and about, their small screen size can be a problem at times. Having recently tried to look something up on my own blog with an iPhone, I realised it was a nightmare to navigate. So I figured it was time for a new theme that could support the iPhone. It turns out that the great people at Brave New Code have created a truly marvellous plugin that makes life even easier.

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