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The problem with spreadsheets

May 9, 2016 By editor

A 2014 report by the Aberdeen Group includes the results of a survey asking what people found most challenging about spreadsheets. The biggest reported challenge was version control issues.

At least people are becoming aware of the problems—even if they are still failing to address them.

One statement in the report that depresses me is

…Best-in-Class organizations are 40% more likely than All Others to have enterprise software that has an interface that mirrors the look and feel of spreadsheets.

My guess is that this is correlation, not causality. But it’s indicative of a perspective that plagues the software industry. Most software is just a copy of something else. Very few people sit down and attempt to build efficient user interfaces.

There are off-the-shelf components for building grids and everyone knows how to use a spreadsheet, so let’s build something that looks like a spreadsheet. That’s how the argument goes.

However, a spreadsheet isn’t a particularly efficient interface. It benefits from the fact that we’ve all been trained in how it works, but this preexisting knowledge drags down true innovation.

Grids of numbers require interpretation. If I’m in front of a computer, I don’t want to have to think about numbers. That’s why I bought the computer. Software developers need to learn how to deliver insights—not data.

Filed Under: Data analysis, Web development

Charts are bad—less UI, more UX

March 8, 2016 By editor

Learning Tree just published my article on why charts (and other data-intensive components) are usually a sign of lazy UI design.

Filed Under: Web development Tagged With: charts, UI, UX

Visual Studio Code released

April 30, 2015 By editor

Microsoft have launched Visual Studio Code—a code-optimized editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It has support for over 30 languages, including JavaScript, C#, F#, Python and Markdown. I’d imagine there will immediate interest from developers who’d like to develop ASP.NET 5 applications on the Mac.

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight, keyboard-centric editor with autocomplete, syntax highlighting and some IntelliSense features.

It’s only in preview, at present—so we can expect many more features in the coming months.

Filed Under: Web development

Google’s mobile search will promote mobile-friendly websites

April 21, 2015 By editor

Google is updating its mobile search algorithm to push mobile-friendly websites up its search rankings.

If traffic from mobile devices is important to you, then check whether your site is defined as mobile-friendly using Google’s testing tool.

Filed Under: Web development

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