Less and smaller text, "Now without context!"

To fit into the new design, Entry Point uses a smaller font to squeeze into the smaller "ticker." PointCast not only uses a larger, bold font, it has room for two rows of content so more headlines and information can be read.

Another feature considered unnecessary was identifying the news source by using icons. Headlines in EP could be from any of the (few) sources. The user might prefer to know if a financial story is from the Wall Street Journal instead or CNN (or E!).

A new kind of "minimize button"

Besides the "grab" area a couple points should be made about the minimize and close "buttons." First they're much smaller than standard size and much closer together. It is now much easier to accidentally close instead of "minimizing" the ticker. Next "minimizing" EntryPoint doesn't minimize it as a normal window, it minimizes into an icon in the tool tray. Now that's really minimizing. One wonders why they didn't consider following the precedents of other tools and have the tray icon work a shortcut and let minimize "minimize."

How not to improve text ticker control

One interesting interface element of PointCast is the use of "gesture." For example, you can grab the ticker text and "control it directly." Clicking a news story brings up the news (as it does in EntryPoint). Simply pressing down the mouse button on the ticker holds it. "Dragging" the text controls its direction --and speed. The latter is done by a little trial and error, but it's not too hard to learn to directly set the scroll speed by "nudging" or "throwing" the ticker text around. It also allows the user to "hurry up the ticker" to get at a story that may have caught out of the corner of the eye before it disappeared (or advance to the stock quotes).

This contrasts with EntryPoint. No direction control. No speed control. A tiny, almost invisibly "pause" button at the left edge if you want to (or can) read the headline. The difference, other than the obvious movement when "playing," between play and pause (as shown at left) is not terribly obvious. If a headline scrolls off, you can't drag it back as PointCast allows.

Also gone is the ability to select what news will appear in the ticker. "Everything all the time," unlike PointCast that has a dialog to select only "desired" ticker items. This extends to eliminating some items such as weather for multiple cities (as shown at above). EntryPoint does show a constant weather forecast graphic which saving time waiting for the "home forecast."

I'm a minor league baseball fan. I liked how PointCast collects the weather of all the cities in the league, as well as information about other configured cities. With that, I have the weather for MANY places I want to know about and travel (including internationally).

Now I have a quick glance at the iconic weather for home (a nice improvement), but gone are the handy, pre-loaded, forecasts for everyone else. The new "short cut" is selecting the "Weather Forecast" option and typing the name (or zip code) of the town of interest. That's fine when they're unique (like Sioux Falls) but a pain when they're not (like "London"). Apparently "Weather' is no longer a feature worthy of a browser, unlike "Fun."

Web page interfaces to customize applications

A major surprise with EntryPoint is using a web browser to configure the program, at least some of the time. For example, "Options..." displays a small, standard windows dialog, but "Personalization" requires a browser (above, scaled at 50% and only the topmost part of the page shown, not including the other pages). It's an interesting interface, and it works, but it

• is quite surprising the first time you do it
• requires launching a full web browser (and all its requirements) just to change settings
• is quite large compared to "normal" dialogs
• introduces web browser usability issues into the application interface
• adds a new internet download dependency for basic configuration
• raises some interesting "privacy" issues when it comes to "where is that information stored?"

Unfortunately there is no option to allow me to tell EntryPoint where to find it. There's no help either from the dialog or on the web page. And there's the conflicting "Congratulations!" message covered by the cryptic "PC Upload" (did I realize that my information was going off my computer to some server somewhere?). --and finally...

"No, it's not 'OK.'"

It might not have occurred to the programmers to check PointCast or its registry to see where it was since it was both installed and running while trying to import the portfolio. Clearly URL for the "Import" link (via ASP; http://main.entrypoint.com/personalize/PCNUploadConfirm.asp in this case) probably doesn't know where I installed PointCast. Unfortunately the developers didn't give EntryPoint a "recovery path" to "browse" to it.

So... it's time to do it by hand -- via the customization web pages. This proved to be surprising since it's a much more complex web form than usual. Via JavaScript you enter symbols to put in your list. All of these are (appear to be) done using buttons, but it was unclear to me how to set my holdings.

After sending my flame to EntryPoint, the automated response pointed out that I was should use the "Edit Holdings / Set Alerts" link under the "Selected Symbols." For reasons unknown, they decided that should be a good old-fashioned HTML (blue underlined text) link. Though all other operations on this page use buttons (such as "Add" or "Remove"). This could be because the label would have been rather long or because the feature was added later.

After trying that... I was able to add the portfolio information (on another web page).

It may be fitting that the button (at right) shows the stock market going down, since the features for stocks and portfolios went downhill too. To access the "stocks" browser requires using the new static "Stocks" button. Unlike "News" or "Sports" menus, this sits below with the ticker text since it includes the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That's acceptable, but there are several things that are still annoying:

• It cannot be changed, even if you remove all references to the DJIA in your portfolio
• Unlike the ticker information, it's just black numbers with none of the affordances (color, up/down arrow) found on ANY of the displays of stock information (including the DJIA)

Then there's the first of many "super tool tips" EntryPoint provides. Hover over the stock or weather tools and you get a summary, not a tool tip. This information is handy and helpful, but it also neglects to tell you what the other tool tips do, namely that clicking the button will bring up more information. It also doesn't prepare you for the fact clicking "Stocks" launches the Stocks window while clicking "Weather" launches a browser window.

That brings us to the "Stocks" (Portfolio) browser...

This, of course, has to have a non-standard window presentation that matches the EP brushed metal design. It eliminates the ability to "minimize" the tool -- apparently we're supposed to just "re-open the window" (using the button on the ticker) instead of minimizing (or maximizing) this window.

This interface has a few interesting surprises in it. First we find our list of portfolio entries displayed as "web links" (blue underlined text). No, the tool tips DON'T provide more information here. Just the painfully obvious, "Click on the symbol to view the stock details." Click them and a browser window shows the "details" -- in a browser window.... unless you select the non-standard "Stock Detail" button on the lower left of the window. Then you get some information in that window pane and another "details" link in that window. The blue links in that window go to the web browser.

This "Details" window is interesting since one thing they chose to leave out was the "current details." Apparently we're supposed to read the small (unconfigurable size) text. A nice background graphic (behind the 52 WK high/low) indicates how the company did, but they chose NOT to (re-)display the stock information of the day in this window pane. Scroll your portfolio and you won't see it at all. Resizing the window expand the portfolio pane. But you can only see three news headlines no matter how tall you try to make the window so there's no reason to try to resize the "Detail."

A little design change and all the information could be displayed, including more news stories assuming that downloading them wouldn't add significantly to the "content push" to this browser.

I live in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A). Amongst the news options Point Cast is the local paper (Minneapolis Star Tribune). One of the "enhancements" of EntryPoint is to omit this option. I also lost "Wired News," another daily favorite. As a user lost a news browser I prefer to the actual websites (since they're periodically preloaded --remember "push," with smaller banners, simple headlines and simple text). I imagine that many other long time users may lament the loss of their local papers and other news sources.

And there's no explanation "why" this happened in this "better browser." PointCast had a very large collection alternate news sources, but apparently they weren't signed onto the move to EntryPoint and there's no explanation. Though it's not uncommon for websites to remove features, such a massive loss of choices (from several dozen to less than a dozen) that were a major feature of PointCast should have at least rated a simple FAQ response. In fact, the FAQ list is rather brief about the changes between PointCast and EntryPoint. Given how jarring the change can be, it might have been "nice" to provide some apologies or hint if favorite features might return.

As with Stocks, News has it's own non-standard window with non-standard buttons. Unlike the Stocks browser, the links (to the web browser) aren't the traditional blue underline; now they turn read as you move over them.

If you hover you get the get the "Mega Tool Tip" headline and first paragraph/summary. These almost certainly push the limits of what is acceptable for a "tool tip." Big bold headline and large text to read.

It's an interesting summary, but why didn't the News developer(s) tell the Stock developer(s) to do it? This feature is so inconsistently used it's easy to assume that the programmers saw mockups of the graphic look and feel but were allowed to experiment with the "cool tool tip" summary.

Apparently the EntryPoint developers didn't look much at the old PointCast or Windows interfaces. They could have learned a lot. First off, all subjects and stories are displayed in a long list. No tabs (as in PointCast allowing faster access), no expanding/collapsing sections (as in Windows or Macintosh). It's "all or nothing." Select a wide collection of topics and you're scrolling quite a ways between sections.

The new "Fun" feature displays a browser as the others (News, Sports, Stocks) do, but its interface has some surprises. If you start, as I did, trying the "serious" browsers you think you understand the GUI affordances until you try "Fun."

Unlike the other browsers, "Fun" has very few options. Click "Comics" or "TV Listings" and you're off to a web browser. The affordance that doesn't stand out is that these buttons aren't in the "dark gray" box area like the other, nearly identical buttons. When comparing the four "browsers" together the "importance" of the "dark grey" box applies to "target" the resulting information (except for the blue text in the "Stocks" as mentioned above). At least the "Fun" developer talked to the News developer and we have the "Mega Tool Tip" summary.

Other "web fun" with EntryPoint

Now is a good time to mention some other problems with a blended interface architecture. PointCast cached all the information when pulled (should I have said "pushed?") from the web ready to read. It may not be current, but it is on your hard disk and labeled when it was last updated. You can control when it's updated, unlike EntryPoint.

The current state of the web can't ensure that any of EntryPoint's (web) buttons will work when clicked. For the (probably bewildered) user, knowing which buttons "always work" (display a local dialog) and those that may not work (due to no modem connection, busy servers, bad DNS lookup, etc.) probably makes for a busy customer service department. And then there's browser variation (Netscape, IE) that might influence operation. And what if the browser crashes?

Focus "fun" with "Mega Tool Tips"

Now is a good time to explore two more other surprises with "Mega Tool Tip"

• Even when the window doesn't have the focus, the summary appears. This can be useful, but it's surprising since most windows don't become that "active" when "inactive."
• EntryPoint windows shuffle if more than one EP browser is displayed at one time. Simply moving the pointer to a headline brings that window to the front of EP (inactive) windows. (At least they don't "jump" in front of other application windows)

A tool the folks at EntryPoint think you need is yet another media player. It's difficult enough to deal with RealPlayer and Windows Media Players you may need for websites, but you now have no choice but to have screen space dedicated to EntryPoint's. Unlike the rest of EntryPoint, it has a separate menu and "personalization pages" (not part of the "main" personalization web pages).

Another surprise is that it isn't downloaded with the rest of EntryPoint. The first time you click one of its buttons, it downloads itself and attempts to install itself. I say attempt, because I had some problems getting this to work on my NT. Interrupting the download, clicking more than one button, can cause EntryPoint to start multiple downloads and installs. These "stomp" on each other while processing.

Assuming you like this player it's great to have the CD controls in the ticker. If you don't, then it's a waste of space.

Trying it was difficult for me since it repeatedly crashed trying to load a CD. What it appears to do though is annoying enough. It displays a window asking to add tracks for the CD inserted. It dutifully does, that then presents a dialog indicated it did it. I can only hope there's some configuration option that allows you to tell it to do (or not do) this automatically.

Menus you can't configure

EntryPoint provides three new menus that will purpotedly link to sites associated with them. At present the last entries suggest "More..." but the resulting link is to an "Under Construction" page. What would seem useful here is to import bookmarks or a menu that the user could configure. The simplest way to do this is to enter a URL into the "web search" box and click "Go."

After all my frustrations, I didn't bother trying these features. What I see in eWallet is another "real world" metaphor, but I'll leave it to someone else to try it. @:^) Yes, the "Help" button launches a web browser. But can you find the close button?