Daniel tonight told me that he hadn’t yet seen a good implementation of an ajax application, that they’re always too slow and the delay bugs him. I really don’t know what he’s talking about so maybe I should have clarified, although I think it’s possible that he’s used ajax on sites that aren’t so obvious and he hasn’t noticed, like, say adoptapet (do an animal search and change the state/territory you’re searching in and the site will ajax you up a new list of shelters in that state).
One app we discussed quickly was Google Reader, the RSS aggregator that I actually use for keeping up with blogs. I reckon Daniel must have been using the mouse to navigate, while I use the shortcut keys which are just like the navigation keys in everyone’s favourite editor, vi. ‘j’ goes to the next post, ‘k’ goes to the previous one and so on. I think it’s a great UI, but then again I don’t really like to use the mouse.
An interface where you plonk your hand down and move one finger or another to make it do things is my cup of tea, not some stupid thing where you have to muster all these motor skills to accurately position a mouse cursor over some tiny target on the screen and then, without moving the mouse, click its button. That’s a lot harder than using simple keystrokes. That’s the only reason I can figure out that people think Google Reader is apparently slow, because I did try using it with the mouse and it’s clunky and irritating.
That said, keyboard shortcuts on web pages aren’t a very conventional feature; most websites force you to use the mouse or make you suffer endless tabbing around every element on the page. Hooray for keyboard shortcuts.