4 posts tagged “user interface”

One minute my jaw is dropping at all of the Web 2.0 goodness oozing from Vox.  The delicious rounded corners, the gentle powderpuff blue... so not like other blogging platforms.

The next minute, almost as if to say the honeymoon's over, I wake up and my Vox entry screen looks like Xanga.  Archaic, beveled buttons with ... what's that, Arial#000?  Even the viewing options and tag editor look like something off a news site. 

Yes, yes, it all functions the same way, but let's not make Craig's List our posterchild.  Great design goes hand in hand with a great product.  While much of Vox's allure is making blogging easy, the really great thing about Vox is that it can make it fun.

I'm just hoping there's a good reason behind the change.  If not, I might get ornary.

Is it just me, or is it getting harder and harder to use MT now that Vox is here?  This compose screen is pure magic.

I was disheartened when I was double posting an article from my other blog to Vox and realized that I couldn't edit the HTML.  Minus one point for Vox.

So I thought, well, I'll just copy and paste the text from my blog.  I pasted it into the Vox compose screen only to be delighted (we're talking giddy here) that the FULL article pasted, pictures, html and all.  Plus ten points for Vox.

Current score: +9

So I say again... WOW.

Note: I'm running FireFox 1.5.0.3 on a PC.  It also works with IE6.  However, my mac friends tell me they can't do this.

Pros

1. Short and simple, easy to pronounce and remember.  (see Wii)
2. Not as many branding issues as Comet.
3. Three letter domain name, gooooooood.
4. Mmm.... Perl....
   

Cons

1. Latin derivative name implies old and dead. (thanks Elise)
2. Vox sounds like Fox, confusing for some.
   
3. Vox is an uglier word than Comet, with sharp angles.
4. They tried to compensate that by putting it in a skype-esque bubbly container that really just adds to the sharpness it (thanks to the vertices of the "cloud").
5. If you're inviting others to use your service, are you going to put a big 'X' highlighted in fire engine red in your logo?

Results
I'm afraid there is just going to be alot of negative feedback for the name initially, with blog posts from The Opposition entitled "Thinking Outside the Vox" or "Voxed In".  Of course this goes both ways, because having a "Vox" of anything is cool.  For instance, I could really go for a "Vox" of Cap'n Crunch right now.  I may be able to live with the name if I see significant improvement in the logo design.  I think that purple comet box was pure genius, and I think it may just work for Vox.

On a more philosophical level, the screaming red logo also seems to imply that it's more about the brand then the users, not an image I think we're going for.  Granted, this is initial launch and you want brand recognition, but it's far too pretentious, especially when one of the pillars of Web 2.0 (don't sue me O'Reilly!) is community.

So we shall see.  I'm in love with the interface, and I think it will be a smash hit for new bloggers.  So 6A may pull a Google and have something that works so well that people don't really care that the logo is ugly.