网站设计与实现中英文对照外文翻译文献

1

中英文对照外文翻译文献

(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)

HOLISTIC WEB BROWSING: TRENDS OF THE FUTURE

The future of the Web is everywhere. The future of the Web is not at your

desk. It’s not necessarily in your pocket, either. It’s everywhere. With each new

technological innovation, we continue to become more and more immersed in the

Web, connecting the ever-growing layer of information in the virtual world to the

real one around us. But rather than get starry-eyed with utopian wonder about this

bright future ahead, we should soberly anticipate the massive amount of planning

and design work it will require of designers, developers and others.

The gap between technological innovation and its integration in our daily

lives is shrinking at a rate much faster than we can keep pace with—consider the

number of unique Web applications you signed up for in the past year alone. This

2 has resulted in a very fragmented experience of the Web. While running several

different browsers, with all sorts of plug-ins, you might also be running multiple

standalone applications to manage feeds, social media accounts and music

playlists.

Even though we may be adept at switching from one tab or window to

another, we should be working towards a more holistic Web experience, one that

seamlessly integrates all of the functionality we need in the simplest and most

contextual way. With this in mind, let’s review four trends that designers and

developers would be wise to observe and integrate into their work so as to pave

the way for a more holistic Web browsing experience:

1. The browser as operating system,

2. Functionally-limited mobile applications,

3. Web-enhanced devices,

4. Personalization.

1. The Browser As Operating System

Thanks to the massive growth of Web productivity applications, creative

tools and entertainment options, we are spending more time in the browser than

ever before. The more time we spend there, the less we make use of the many

tools in the larger operating system that actually runs the browser. As a result,

we’re beginning to expect the same high level of reliability and sophistication in

our Web experience that we get from our operating system.

For the most part, our expectations have been met by such innovations as

Google’s Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Docs applications, which all offer varying

degrees of integration with one another, and online image editing tools like Picnik

and Adobe’s online version of Photoshop. And those expectations will continue to

be met by upcoming releases, such as the Chrome operating system—we’re

already thinking of our browsers as operating systems. Doing everything on the

Web was once a pipe dream, but now it’s a reality.

UBIQUITY

The one limitation of Web browsers that becomes more and more obvious as

we make greater use of applications in the cloud is the lack of usable connections

between open tabs. Most users have grown accustomed to keeping many tabs open,

switching back and forth rapidly between Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs

and various social media tools. But this switching from tab to tab is indicative of

broken connections between applications that really ought to be integrated.

Mozilla is attempting to functionally connect tools that we use in the browser

in a more intuitive and rich way with Ubiquity. While it’s definitely a step in the

right direction, the command-line approach may be a barrier to entry for those

3 unable to let go of the mouse. In the screenshot below, you can see how Ubiquity

allows you to quickly map a location shown on a Web page without having to

open Google Maps in another tab. This is one example of integrated functionality

without which you would be required to copy and paste text from one tab to

another. Ubiquity’s core capability, which is creating a holistic browsing

experience by understanding basic commands and executing them using

appropriate Web applications, is certainly the direction in which the browser is

heading.

This approach, wedded to voice-recognition software, may be how we all

navigate the Web in the next decade, or sooner: hands-free.

TRACEMONKEY AND OGG

Meanwhile, smaller, quieter releases have been paving the way to holistic

browsing. This past summer, Firefox released an update to its software that

includes a brand new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey. This engine delivers

a significant boost in speed and image-editing functionality, as well as the ability

to play videos without third-party software or codecs.

Aside from the speed advances, which are always welcome, the image and

video capabilities are perfect examples of how the browser is encroaching on the