I am not sure if the submitter was the creator or not, but I found a couple of issues that I thought were sort of prohibitive or at least counter to the intentions of the site (it should "just work").
1) The font choice when hovering over "Edit" or "Set up" on a button is REALLY weird. I'm a 31 year old dude and it took me a few seconds longer than it should have (i.e., zero seconds) to parse it
2) "Search" seems to default to http://google.com (which is fine, except that using Google Chrome, for some reason http://google.com doesn't work for me. I need to prepend a www or use google.ca - seems as though the automatic country based redirect is broken?). And there doesn't seem to be any way to edit it. So the most prominent, and probably most used, button is broken immediately.
Nice idea, probably needs some review on implementation.
Strange. I'm using Chromium and that button works for me. What's your version?
While I tend to agree, you also have to see, that http://google.com works for almost all users; and adding more options just makes the interface harder.
Interesting idea - but awful marketing. "Hey, gran, call me if you get stuck. xxx" Incredibly condescending.
That said, while my grandfather uses the web every day, he does sometimes get stuck. But a little extra personalization / friendliness would help. Where the phone number is now, I'd love to be able to send my grandpa a new message every day, share a photo of a family member, hook in the NYT headlines, etc.
Of course, then it turns into a kind of Duplo Netvibes and it's 2005 all over again. Still, I can see there being a userbase.
Interesting. Desktop OSs don't have the interfaces to handle what many people use computers for primarily these days: web apps in browsers. The rest of a desktop OS is almost superfluous - they need a way to launch a browser, mainly.
But then, where's the interface that brings all these web apps together? A Bookmark list is pretty archaic. Opera led the way with Speed Dial, and Safari and Chrome give you your most used bookmarks, as far as providing a graphical menu when you start your browser. There are various extensions and web sites that provide that, too, but it's still not like a proper interface.
I don't know whether this is a proper interface (the colors?), but it is a great idea at the core.
I was thinking I would have to set something like this up for my (non-reading, 3-year-old) youngest daughter. It ends up, there's no need-- she just memorizes the positions of the items in the Favorites list in IE.
In other words: this is all about psychology, not intellect, and the site looks like it does it well. Congratulations.
The design and marketing need quite a lot of work. The button on the landing screen should be shown as more of a screenshot of the project rather than what appears to be a demo of how it works. I clicked several of these buttons, including the browser buttons before realizing it wasn't interactive.
Then, while setting up my buttons there is a pop up when you rollover "edit" that reads "click here…" I never found out what it said after "click here," because I would try to click there when it popped up, then it would disappear. This is entirely confusing to have an edit button, then when they try to use it, you distract them with fluff.
Overal the interface needs to be treated with a similar concept as the business. Make it easier and dumb it down, don't try to add playfulness and uniqueness where it isn't needed.
I think I like the idea (though I'm wildly outside of the target audience). Any chance you could add the option to use some of the open source icons[1] (or automatically detect and show the favicon for a site)?
Hello everyone. I'm part of the team developing the site. Gotta thank you all for the comments. We've already started making some of the changes thanks to what you've written (eg google.com not working for you in Chrome).
The site isn't officially launched just yet and we're aware of some of the issues. We've got another version waiting in the wings on a dev server but definitely going to take your feedback into account. Cheers!
And yes, the site's target audience are "older people" though we would include anyone not familiar with the internet. It also relies on an actual human who knows you helping out. Think of it as a jumping off area (both technically and for developing a relationship between the natives and the newbies)
If only you could do something about what happens after you press one of the buttons!
Setting up shortcuts/aliases/bookmarks is already easy, and my "mentees" already know my face and phone number. The usability of all the different websites is the problem.
Jesus. Zoom out 4 times and the site becomes usable. Especially the edit button page. The text is overwhelmingly large, as in, it was stressful when I opened it until I CTRL+-'d several times.
I believe that's by design. My grandmother doesn't see so well, but still likes to use the internets.
Next time you're in the phone isle in Walmart, note that they still sell wall-mount telephones with huge number buttons. There are also cell-phones designed the same way, specifically for seniors.
Yeah, the text is so large, grandma's going to be scrolling. Which actually means that she won't be scrolling or seeing all of the text and will be confused before realizing this was done "for her".
The post keeps getting downvoted... I'm not sure why. All the older people I know have very small monitors and considering the state of resolution across computers today, and the width of that website with that huge font, I feel like my assertion is rather valid.
I think that demographic has a quite high chance of missing that this particular implementation (which looked nice, once I understood what it was for) lives on a .org domain. If they fail to realize that though, http://internetbuttons.com/ is there with completely differently designed content on the same topic. I'd say that makes this domain name "weak".
1) The font choice when hovering over "Edit" or "Set up" on a button is REALLY weird. I'm a 31 year old dude and it took me a few seconds longer than it should have (i.e., zero seconds) to parse it
2) "Search" seems to default to http://google.com (which is fine, except that using Google Chrome, for some reason http://google.com doesn't work for me. I need to prepend a www or use google.ca - seems as though the automatic country based redirect is broken?). And there doesn't seem to be any way to edit it. So the most prominent, and probably most used, button is broken immediately.
Nice idea, probably needs some review on implementation.