Today I was logging into my bank account. I was so pleased when it auto-selected the username field. There are almost no occasions that I go to the site and don’t login to my account.
This reminded me of the first time I saw Google. It was somewhere in 1999. Paul DeStefano walked into the WITS Help Desk and showed it to me. He really liked the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. I remember being wowed by getting the United Airlines site when I typed in their name. That shows how bad search was in 1999.
What impressed me most was a very simple bit of Javascript. When the sparse page loaded, the search box was auto-selected. Duh!
It wasn’t new technology, but it also wasn’t being used much. Perhaps developers were worried about users disabling Javascript or worse getting Javascript errors. Google pushed forward anyway, probably understanding their techie early adopters. Paul, for example, used to try to save old data off of floppies for fun.
Google led the way by using this little Javascript snippet. Thankfully, my bank followed. Google has continued, leading the Ajax revolution, producing more responsive interfaces (think GMail, Google Maps). To me, it all goes back to 1999, when Paul convinced me to take a moment’s break from tech support.
My first Google memory was in 98 or so when my friend told me that it was the best website to search for directions on how to make fake IDs.
Aah, high school.