• Paint has an extremely simple user interface strictly following the desktop metaphor. Because of this, there is no way a user can go wrong with Paint. There is one window, one canvas and one toolbar/ribbon area to deal with. There is the pallet area too (prior Windows 7); but most users are OK with it.
• Paint starts fast: you don’t have to wait a few minutes to use Paint. It has such a small memory footprint and will start before you are done doing with double-click. Another benefit of the small memory footprint is that you don’t need a fancy computer to run Paint on.
• You can only use the most common file types with Paint. Here again, you do something, and save the file in your format of choice without being presented a handful of post-save options. The file is just saved and ready to be used in a few clicks.
• You will never rip apart the Paint UI by accident. Most modern software are designed with ‘total UI flexibility’ in mind so that there are 101 toolbars and menus to a density where people are scared to move the mouse pointer across the screen with the fear of moving one part of the UI and sticking it in another area rendering a total mess in the GUI. Paint doesn’t have this pervasive silliness.
• Paint is ubiquitous. Buy a new computer and Paint will be pre-installed with it; go to a friend’s PC and Paint could be found there; it’s installed by default on every PC since Windows 95. It’s totally available to you during the lifetime of your computer and will never expire asking you for a new serial number.

Certainly these aren’t the only reasons why someone would like Paint. For most people, the main reason to like Paint is its simplicity and availability. A normal user doesn’t fancy sophistication in software. They want their job done, in the easiest way and in the shortest time. Maybe there are the same reasons why Notepad is the most famous text editor for Windows.

OneNote strengths

Although EverNote has managed to surpass Microsoft OneNote in some areas, OneNote is still strong in formatting text, etc. OneNote’s ability to automatically tabulate content as soon as it detects a table like structure is severely missed in EverNote. The default colors and fonts on OneNote goes nicely with the rest of the Microsoft Office suite to the extent where a note entered in OneNote is no different to a document typed in Microsoft Word.

EverNote strengths

The latest version of EverNote is as mighty as you want it to be. Write once, access from anywhere in the world (which requires a registration on the EverNote server) is the best feature you can cheer upon. The new user interface is very simple and user-friendly. Unlike the OneNote UI which is a candy jar in its appearance, the new EverNote UI has a unique touch and a soothing green shade to it. Once you start working on it, you wouldn’t want to go back to another note taking tool ever.

The bottom line

Many note taking tools roamed but none prevailed to be the best among the rest until the days of OneNote. The introduction of OneNote damaged every other note taking tool’s reputation and took note taking to another level with sophistication and novelty. The lessons learnt from OneNote’s arrival have been put in to practice nicely with the introduction of EverNote 3. The next big thing will be to see how Microsoft strikes back with their next version of OneNote. Or will it be just Microsoft Notes?

nStation has a new theme from today onwards (July 16, 2008). This theme is a fresh design I came up with a couple of days back. It took me about a week to complete the design and another week to develop it to a WordPress Theme.

This theme is more modern looking than the previous two. There is adequate white space surrounding objects and consistency has been preserved across pages. I have also made every attempt to make it look good on all browsers. Different sections of the theme (header, main menu, content area, etc.) have different appeals to it so that they do not conflict with each other in appearance.

The most notable element on this design is the large desktop area on the top of the page. On my previous two themes I used an area similar to this to designate specialty. For example, for Halloween, I had jack-o-lanterns on this space. But the header blended with the rest of the design too well to the point where it was not noticeable. There was also a lot of work involved as a change in the header was in fact a change in the entire design. Now on this design, the header has been made an integral part of the design while without making it a part of the content.

With the introduction of this theme, I’m going to release the previous theme to the WordPress community. It will take some time though as it needs some modifications and patching before making it more public aware.

Note: This was done on off hours. Therefore a week’s work is about ten to fifteen hours.

Ergonomics of the right-handed design: The practice of creating right hand oriented icons has come in to play from industrial design as almost all devices are right-hand oriented. If you haven’t noticed this before, the right-handed design is the same reason why your TV remote is well operated from your right hand compared to the left hand. The power button (or any other crucial controller) is conveniently placed where your thumb finger would rest when you are holding the remote. This is the same reason why controls are placed on the right-hand side of the elevator; and the list can go on and on.

To illustrate this, I’ve shown the left hand orientation in the Google Android UI icons here. See how the Android design is completely opposite to the common design in certain cases.

Primary and secondary objects are used in these icons to suggest the left hand orientation. For example the Alarm Clock, Browser, Calculator and Calendar icons are oriented towards the left hand side. The Dialer and Messaging icons clearly show the left hand orientation as the handset and the pencil is held left-handedly.

Certainly the current Android prototype is too early to sustain till the final release. Probably the entire set of UI icons will be changed in the final release. Maybe this is done purposely to be different from the rest of the world. The guys at Google are famous for doing things differently. I’m not complaining here — just enjoying the fact that someone has made a design that suite my style as I’m a left-hander!

Android screenshot courtesy androidcommunity.com.