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Webapp design hints & tips from the del.icio.us founder

Joshua Schachter presented at the The Future of Web Apps summit in London this week and both Peter Cooper & Simon Willison have posted some excellent notes from that session.

The key findings from these notes for me are:

  • Keep URLs simple. Leave all the framework invisible, it doesn't help the user, keep URLs clean. "Nobody cares" about complex URLs.

  • Some latency in the system is OK - work out where you have leeway, e.g. RSS
    feeds can fall a few minutes behind without anyone minding.

  • Keep API simple - REST, etc.

  • When people ask for features, get to the bottom of why they are asking for
    that exact thing. Solve the problem, rather than doing exactly what your asked
    for.

  • The features you put in are as important as the ones you leave out.

  • Don't waste time building features nobody uses.

These cover similar points to the ones I raised in yesterday's post about stripping requirements down to the bare-bones.

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