After helping with Busy.org romanian translation, I got the Ideea of a universal language, that would simplify the Interface to all the sites on the internet.
This Ideea is not new. Here is a text I found about User interface designers:
"Their specialty is to create a visual system that is easy for users to navigate through. Using icons, visual symbols can represent a task or an action. They can also just be informational, and help guide a user intuitively down that path, to what he or she is looking for, and back out again. You know what most people say about the iPhone? “My kid can use it.”"
Text source on oshyn.com blog
User experience
When I join for the first time a site, I have to learn the controls. I rarely set the language to my native language because I'm accustomed with the english words, having certain actions. In learning the new actions and the position of the new controls, there is also frustration when I know what I want to do, but can't remember where the control is. Opening the menus and forming neuronal links in my brain to associate the controls to their actions, takes time, attention and patience.
Children have a greater ability to form new connections between neurons, than old people, Once the first connections are formed, it becomes harder to learn, because the old connections interfere with the new ones.
I think It would nice if we could have a standard interface "language" for the internet, a set of symbols and specific locations for graphical interfaces, but every big company makes it's own design.
User interface
Maybe we could all become interface designers and custom our own interfaces.
We could have an inteligent browser configurable to our preferences. It could recognize and grab the usual controls on a site and reassign them to our pre-configured interface. It would strip the content from the controls and even translate the content if we wish.
Now googling configurable browser interface I find a two years old Microsoft Patent for this ideea.
Do you know any browser that has a configurable interface?
Why is this cool thing not available yet?