Gillian Andrews makes some thoughtful remarks about usability, “web literacy,” and human foibles in response to the Facebook login/ReadWriteWeb flap.
Interface designers aren’t helping. Most URL bars now resolve into search results. This may seem like a good UI solution, but it is a catastrophic mistake from a literacy perspective. URLs aren’t just how we get to a page; they are involved in how we judge its content, accuracy, point of view, and most importantly who owns it.
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The funny thing about the patterns in these misunderstandings is that they predate the Web…. Fans have been writing letters to the heroine of Romeo and Juliet at least since the release of the first movie in the 1930s; they arrive by the mailbag in Verona, Italy every year, despite the fact that if you’ve read through to the end, Juliet clearly isn’t in any state to write a letter back.