On January 31st the latest version of jQuery 1.5 is expected to be released. With that a lot of new bug fixes, features and changes will be introduced. That is, many developers will then check their code and improve one or another thing. But unlike Flash or other frameworks, most developers will just stay using the jQuery version they have been used unless they really need to change something. With jQuery that’s possible since the jQuery version is selected by the developer and not the user. In case of other frameworks users will perform the update and thus some web pages will have to change in order to be displayed or work correctly. Thus the developer has more control.

However, I’ve also digged into web page performance for some sites and still think about one line of code. Over and over again I’m importing a jQuery javascript file at the end of the homepage – thus loading roughly 79 KB (gzipped is aroung 25KB). Since I’m using Google’s CDN a visitor who has previously been to another website using the same version has already downloaded it already and thus eliminating the delay. But not everybody does that.

So, why don’t we just pave the cowpaths as suggested by the HTML 5 design principles and create a “jQuery framework” that’s downloaded once and available always in the browser. Sure, you have versioning issues, but since the file is so small you could have 5-6 versions installed. The advantage of this could be that the jQuery code is saved in a complied version and thus load even faster. If the version you need is not yet available on the system it would be downloaded instead and availible for all other websites later.

Are there any other drawbacks to this?

Some thoughts later – and bike rides, which I usually need to think about stuff – I remembered a book I read about 5 years ago: “Crossing the Chasm” from Geoffrey A. Moore

A short overview of “Crossing the Chasm”.
In this book Moore explains how high-tech companies can market new innovations to the mainstream market. This is important because the early market and the mainstream don’t share a lot when discontinuous innovations are to be sold. The important aspect is the adapted technology adoption life cycle and the chasm that lies between the early adopters and the early majority.

Crossing the chasm with scenarios and personas
The key to get into the mainstream market is to use a small segment and start with that and then use adjacent segments to sell more and more. In order to select a segment he suggests to create target customers and scenarios for these customers of how they will use the product within their segment.

We need something that feels a lot more like real people. However, since we do not have real live customers as yet, we are just going to have to make them up.

This might be familiar to anyone working in user experience design.

How does relate to personas in user interface design?
When UX designers create a website, product, or any other service they usually use personas to better understand the needs and be able to judge about different design options. The model now suggests that we have to use different personas in the technology life cycle since the 5 psychographic groups change over time. Each group needs a different set of product presentation and reasons to buy. The most important group is, however, the early majority since they need a whole product that can provide a complete user experience.

So what is different with vox.com. It has one feature I always missed and that was for many people a reason to not have a blog – privacy control. It lets you decide who can read your post. Whether it’s the whole world, your friends or your family. Now you can decide who can read your posts and view your photos.

Why is that so important? Many people use their weblogs to communicate with friends and so on. However, weblogs can be read by the whole world. This is not how it should be – only your friends should be able to read it. So, many people switched back to good old email and sent an email to all their friends. Sometimes with very long text and images. Now, you can manage to do that with a blog tool and still get the privacy you had with email.

Another aspect is, that a new way to communicate will emerge. Lets look at an email conversation with 4 people. You write the first one to 3 of your friends, and all 3 reply to your first one. So, how do you integrate their comments in your email to all 4 again. Actually you can’t do that very well and even more, if those 4 reply to all 4 participants, it doesn’t get better. I am sure you had that experience.

I already used Basecamp to communicate with more than one person in an email like way and it was a lot easier than with email. Everybody sees each others comment and will react on this comment. Also, you can view the conversation more easily.

Now with vox.com you can start conversations, not just blog posts, with others using your blog tool and don’t have to use email anymore. Sure, there are still uses for email but this opens up a whole new world.

A funny way to show everybody where you have been. I like stuff like that just because of curiosity (see also my post about www.onethousandpaintings.com)