Announcing Intertexti!

I am making available a Community Technology Preview edition of a product that I am working on called Intertexti.  People that register as testers will receive a lifetime free copy of the final version!  Visit here (http://radiant-basin-3170.herokuapp.com/) to read more about Intertexti (the website is being hosted by Heroku and I haven’t set up an alias to the domain intertexti.com yet), download the trial version or register (basically, email me directly at the moment) for a full version and access to the forums.

Intertexti is a notecard filing / organizing system, providing cross-referencing and cross-indexing capabilities for both custom notecards and notecards with embedded web pages. In fact, notecards are webpages, whether they are custom content or links to your favorite sites.

Intertexti helps you organize the information that you encounter daily while surfing the web, planning an event, coming up with characters for a short story or book — the uses are limitless. Information important to you is organized so that it is relevant for you.

Intertexti can be used for professionals and personal needs alike. At home, use it to organize your recipes, cross-reference web sites on organic farming or your favorite hobby, and at work, use it to track project information, research new product ideas, organize meeting notes — it’s all about transforming information into meaningful knowledge that help you make decisions and take action.

When Metro Fails

Here’s a great example of a fail, in my opinion, of a Metro design.  It’s the installer for Wix Toolset:

This is a Metro looking starting screen, and it took me probably 15 seconds to figure out where I was supposed to click to install the toolset.

First issue: What’s with all the red?  This means I should be paying attention to something, right?

Second issue: What the heck is this screen?  I was expecting a standard install screen.

Third issue: Now what?  What am I supposed to do?  The icons are meaningless to me.  Oh wait, maybe I should read that teansie-weansie text for each of the boxes.

Fourth issue: Ah, there is “Install” in a tiny font.

Really, just because Microsoft says “Metro” doesn’t mean we all need to jump like automatons, does it?  And if you think Metro is the right way to go, please, please, design something that actually is intuitive.

Further Failures

After clicking on “Install”, I note the following further failures:

1. The entry on my Window’s taskbar shows an icon that I can only assume is from Wix with no text.  That’s helpful.
2. The installation starts with a spinning “gear” – I have no idea what it’s doing.
3. A lot of meaningless file information eventually flashes by, too fast to read, too long to fit on the screen.
4. The progress bar (if you can figure out that the darker red is a progress bar) jumps right, left, right, left, like a spastic hamster
5. After it’s completed, the first screenshot still stays there.  Now what?  I guess I should click on “Exit”?

That my 2c.