02 Jun 2006, 12:37 am
I'm in the Web development field, so I've heard a lot about a company called 37signals. They developed Ruby on Rails, were early adopters of AJAX, and I've seen a *ton* of websites lately that are designed in a similar style to their stuff. So they are indeed pretty innovative and creative.
Unfortunately, it all goes to hell from there. They have a few web applications including Writeboard, Ta-Da Lists, Backpack, and Basecamp. As far as I can tell, they're all pretty much the same thing. They're just to-do lists, with all the requisite AJAX stuff: in-place editing, draggable thingies, and the yellow flash effect when you update something.
They're based on the company's philosophy that applications are too complex and overwrought, and that simple, logical, user-oriented software is the way to go. It sounds nice and all, but in reality, their stuff is absolute garbage. The company I work for uses Backpack, and it's one of the crappiest pieces of software I've ever had the misfortune of using.
I often have a large list of programming/website development tasks, which I complete on a development server, test, and then put on a production server. I like to flag things I've completed internally, and then check them off when they actually go live. But because Backpack is so wonderful and simple and user-friendly, items are either checked-off or not-checked-off. No progress meter, no flags, nothing but a checkbox and a text field. Checking an item moves it into a completed tasks section at the bottom of the page.
At first I planned to check each item off as I completed it, then when I made the changes live, I'd edit each item and put an (L) in front of it. But once you check an item off, it can no longer be edited. You have to un-check it, make the change, and then re-check it.
Then I thought I could just move completed tasks to the bottom of the list. You can re-order things, but because they have to use all the cliched AJAX crap, this means you have to click a "re-order" button, and then drag items around. Not only is that stupid to begin with, it's a downright pain in the ass when the list doesn't fit without scrolling. I have to drag the item to the bottom of the screen, scroll, drag again, scroll, etc. Then to go back to edit mode, I have to click the button again--when it doesn't randomly disappear, that is. In vBulletin I can re-sort categories by simply entering a number. If I want to put a category below #9, I type "10" into the sort field and I'm done. That is *legitimately* simple and user-friendly, just not in style at the moment.
Now I'm no stranger to crappy software, but what irks me is that everyone seems to think their web apps are some kind of miracle. Whenever I see discussions about their products, people talk as if they've never before imagined the concept of a to-do list. They think 37signals is amazing and innovative because they crank out web applications that are no complex than what a community college student could develop, and are frankly inferior to Notepad.
I finally resorted to printing out my to-do lists and using a pen to mark items as finished & live. Maybe that's what they mean by making things simple and user-friendly. 
