The Dynamic Blogger

Some of you may have noticed the new look of this blog. It's a new Blogger feature called dynamic views.

You can now choose how this blog is displayed simply by clicking a link near the top: Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, and so on.

The results are quite spectacular - the listings are display in an animated fashion. No more boring, static text.

This new feature reflects the epitome of effective design in two ways:

• to enable this feature, the author simply has to change one setting - an extremely simple act
• it allows the reader to have control over the display of information

This last point cannot be emphasized enough. We laugh about the days when Henry Ford said that customers could have any colour car they wanted, as long as it was black. We then proceed to create single versions of our documents in which the user is just as unable to change the appearance as they were with the black Model T Ford.

Information can be viewed in so many places: paper, websites, PDAs, tablets, and so on. If that weren't enough, everyone has their own personal preference on how that information is displayed. The ability to give the user some control over that appearance is paramount.

Blogger's dynamic views currently has seven options. Expect to see that number rise to...infinity.