Language as an interface
Quicksilver, meet the Internet.
Actually, that's unfair, but it's a convenient way to explain the concept (well, at least to a Mac user).
Lovely to see the determination of Aza Raskin, whose devotion to the idea of a language based interface lives on from Humanized, and ends up in the current 'OS' of Firefox.
The idea of language as an interface is hardly new, but like all the best ideas, this takes the command line and makes it work incredibly well for the current environment we spend our time in. And that, of course, is the web browser.
And language based interfaces bring interesting design challenges:
Typography
The importance of language
Presentation of text
Not to mention the portability of the interface; the windows control device is universally understood by seasoned PC users, and can easily be 'ported' to other languages.
When the entire interface is language, does this cause increased difficulty in non-English usage?
This week has been a good week for language interfaces.
Cross posted at guydickinson.com.
