The Importance of the Interface

On her weblog Anita commented that I am writing longer posts here than I usually do in my weblog Coffee and Oranges. I had noticed this myself, though three days hardly seems enough to make a trend. For CaO, I write my entries into a text editor (a very nice one called NoteTabPro.) I then run a script that converts the more or less plain text into HTML, wraps the template around it, and ftps the results to my website host. I’ve been using this editor for years, and feel very comfortable with it, so I was surprised that my usual verbosity became more apparent when I started writing “Five Acres.”

I looked at the input screen for TypePad which is nice and clean (surely I can say that much, despite the Non Disclosure Agreement.) Then I looked at my editor which was ready with my weblog text file. The thing that immediately occurred to me is that the font sizes of the two applications are very different, with TypePad being much smaller. I fill up the screen in my editor a lot more quickly than I do the input box for TypePad. Filled up screen seems to equal time to post for me. I think there may be more involved, but have changed the font size of my editor to see if that makes a change in my behavior. In fact, as I wrote this post in Zempt, I found myself growing uncomfortable when I reached the bottom of its box.