Why indeed…
I’ll be a lot happier when the Frogans Player is out, because then I’ll have an easier time talking about the key perks when browsing with a frogans.
The user experience aspects take the top slots on the perk list. After all, that’s what’s going to make or break the implantation of the technology; to convince Internet creators, developers and publishers to trust the platform with their content, create frogans, put them online, and finally get people to check them out. The principal focus in Frogans technology development has always been (according to Alexis and Amaury – and I tend to believe them) on what works for the end-user.
People scour the Internet for content, but often pay a certain price when they receive it: a cluttered desktop, for instance, is one of those things that we’ve come to live with. You’ve got this, that, and the other thing hogging your screen space, right up to the point that you’re no longer sure which page is open, and which isn’t. You ask yourself where that second and third window or tab came from, and why you simply don’t have what you want there in front of you.
It zooms up and down in real time
Frogans give the end-user new options for viewing on-line content. You might have read the entry I wrote on widgets (and other mini-apps), and how, at first glance, frogans can resemble widgets: relatively small, differently-shaped windowless objects floating on your screen. The real differences between frogans and widgets, in fact, outweigh their similarities.
The first thing that an end-user is likely to notice is that their frogans is never covered up by a window. So you say, “Yikes! It may be small, but it’s in front of MySpace!”
Relax. Take a breath. Click on the edge of your frogans and drag. It zooms up and down in real time. When you zoom down (click on the edge and drag towards the center) the whole thing shrinks – images, buttons, type and all. Since there’s no window around it, it can get really small. At its smallest size (depending on how it’s authored) it might take on a more simplified appearance. At any rate, it’s now no bigger than your typical desktop icon, only it’s still on the top layer of your interface.
Now you can tuck it away somewhere, an edge, a corner of your screen. You can get back to it without the usual mental shuffling; you know: “Spreadsheet -> Web -> Spreadsheet -> Web -> Media Player… where was I?”