Don't Click It

I don't think the idea is that great but I found myself looking around for a very long time. These guys really care about this project and have taken some time to do it properly. I give it 10/10 for what it is...

http://www.dontclick.it/

What it is is:
a project to see if a 'click-less' interface would work on a web environment. Basically, can you resist clicking on things????

That's neat. It really makes way more sense than buttons.

That's genius. I think I've just spent a day there and not realised, It's kind of addictive. One problem though - how do you do a click-and-drag style action. We'll see though, I really like UI experiments. I can't wait for multi-touch screens to get into apples laptops.

All the stuff going on with UI's is quite exciting at minute I just hope some good actually comes of it.

Pete.

Wow, that is a wonderful idea. I think I could give up clicking for lent without any problem.

That is so cool!!! It's great for those with sore index fingers and carpal tunnel syndrome!

I personally don;t like it... I think clicking is an important action is 'confirming' what you want to do. If web-developers actually started to use these techniques, it would really confuse the intellectually challenged majority of people...

Having said that, it's damn cool!

Only people who have a basic understanding of how computers work would use this. I hope that means they are not intellectually challenged. Because, if they are....we are in BIG trouble.

I will half disagree with you spinal. Certainly it goes against the norm, but Flash does that by itself. Buttons don't look like browser buttons in Flash, and if someone can't figure out the UI when you don't have to click, that someone probably wouldn't get it if they did have to click. It's unconventional, but not complicated or unusable.

I'm reluctant to click anything here at WebForumz for fear of getting an error message!

That's really cool though.

I think that is cool. Especially for flash enabled environments. Even I get lost sometimes on some flash enabled websites in wondering where to click to proceed. This makes it more user friendly I think. It can also sell more i personally think. Most people really don't want to click on anything unless they really have to. Cool idea

Hi Ryan, I agree on your disagreeing with me, if that makes any sense.
As flash goes, it's great, easier to use, etc... I'm just not a fan of flash for the same reasons you meantioned: it's not conventional. And I believe that convention (and standards) is what drives the web forward.

I don't think flash has a future in web-design...

About the site itself, I crashed it 2 times by just clicking cause im a noob and couldn't resist, lol.

One of my Client's websites has a flash navigation. The buttons don't look like links to them because there is no underline and they are not blue and we get several support calls every day from people asking how to navigate the site. With that being said, If I took away the click and made it a mouse-over effect, the phones would be ringing off the hook.

As far as your flash stuff goes, I think with the new things that CSS can do and the ever growing CSS support by browsers, that Half of the stuff flash is used for will be gone for good! But flash is evolving just as fast and while it is evolving away from web site design, it is growing in Web-Based Tutorials and Videos.

I completely disagree, convention has never changed anything and certainly won't drive things forward. Innovation and creativity are what get things changed. I'm all for web standards but there is a very real danger that they will encourage stagnation and laziness within the field.

Pete.

Hi Pete,

I see what you're saying but I must disagree... Perhaps you misunderstood me.

Once upon a time, the big boys (IBM, HP and the likes) couldn't agree on how to represent binary numbers. Companies were choosing their own separate ways and any developments in technology were isolated from the rest of the world. Until it got so bad that they just had to introduce international standards.

Convention and standards don't mean "no innovation", they're just guidelines as to how we should innovate. Stick to them and everyone will benefit from it...

Diego A.

Guidlines to how you should innovate, in my opinion, are called limitations, restrictions. The technology of tomorrow (whenever tomorrow is) will probably be a new one that has yet to be invented. And if you stivk to standards and what browsers etc. are capable of now then you're not not going to create that technology are you.

It's the rebels who are the trend-setters. They will decide the future of the internet, not the majority who follow standards and convention. There are always limitations to each technology and rather than working with what you have a select few will decide what they want to achieve and if the current techology does not allow for it they will create a new one. You should lead the technology, not the other way around.

I respect your views and I understand where you are coming from, but standards only allow a technology to be used without fear of it not working, they do not lead to innovation. I am a big accessibility advocate myself, I believe anyone should be able to view a site no matter what browser they are using. If they have a medical condition, or even if they are simply not used to computers and websites they should still be able to use sites easily.

However, if I wanted to implement something on a site and a current technology could not support it ehn I wouldn't hesitate to think outside of the box, as it were, to make it happen. Not standards perhaps, not convention, but true innovation.

Pete.

Standards make everything you're arguing possible. I'm going to have to disagree with you, Pete. I'm siding with spinal on this one.

But standards wouldn't exist if it wasn't for those initial innovators. And it's only now that these technologies have been around for a while that standards exist. And you can't possibly believe that we'll be using xhtml and css forever, there will come a point where more is required from the internet. Home users system's will become more capable of processing larger files and more complex technologies. As a result someone, somewhere will harness the power and build on what we have.

I'm not saying that you can't create new and exciting things using what we have now, all I'm saying is that it takes rule breakers to take the leaps and bounds that have been taken for thousands of years and they are the reason why we are where we are today. From the discovery of fire to on-the-fly integration of dynamic content within a website. It's clever stuff but they certainly didn't stick with what they knew to get this far, and I don't know about you but I don't want to let the team down by standing still.

Will we be remembered in history as the generation who simply did nothing because we thought we were ok as we were? I hope not.

Pete.

Innovation vs Standards..it is the oldest argument in the business world. Innovation is what makes things happen, Standards are what keeps them working. The web will never loose innovation because of Open Source. As long as people continue to be in volved, the web will continue to inovate.
One of the great strengths of the human race is its curiosity about things. That's why there are always people trying new things. It's what I call the 'I wonder if..' Creativity, Curiousity...what ever you want to call it...Just don't ever let anyone talk you out of it.

Standards aren't an oppressive force, they just lay down a foundation for innovators to do their thing. And it's not as though the standards haven't evolved since the internet's inception; in fact, they've changed dramatically to give those free thinkers more than enough room to move around and accomplish amazing things. Without the standards in place now, browsing websites would be a very frustrating thing.

I'm not saying standards are oppresive, but I think they could seem limiting to some, perhaps not now but maybe in the future. And standards always follow innovation, Sometimes innovation can be a part of standards - it happens a lot. But you can guarantee that the same thing will happen again, it's an endless cycle and if it stops so will the progression of the 'net.

And I agree that standards are very important and totally necessary, but essentially you're adapting what is already there to create a seemingly new thing. It's like the energy saving lightbulb, it's great, new, and clever but it's essentially just an improvement not an actual new concept. I'm not saying that devalues it, but sometimes to get to the next step you need to look at things from a totally different angle.

Pete.