Besides rearranging the menu structure one was able to pick between
default
presets: "Beginner", "Advanced" and "Expert". This was very excellent
idea for an application with millions of functions. I would go mad if I
were using the "Expert" menu at the beginning, also I would not be able
to do all things when I were expert and hat the "Beginner" menu.(*)
I don't like this idea, because how do you know if you are a Beginner
or an Expert? For example, you might say "Jesse is an expert with
Photoshop." I've been using the program for years, and I would say that
I am probably an expert... but only in the parts of the application I
know. There is probably 80% of the program that I don't use and know
almost nothing about, but I still think that I am proficient with
Photoshop. That is the problem with using such hard labels as
"Beginner" or "Expert" -- we are often experts and beginners at the
same time.
Another great example of this is Flash MX's ActionScript palette. There
used to be a Beginner and an Advanced toggle. There are some things,
obviously, that can only be done in Advanced mode, but Beginner also
had some nice hinting that wasn't there in Advanced. Rather than
concentrating their efforts on making one really good interface,
Macromedia made two totally different ones. Often, I would find myself
switching back and forth between the two modes, because for some things
I was a beginner, and for some things I was more advanced, and neither
interface was a complete solution.
I would prefer we treat the interface as simply and elegantly as
possible, and let users add in the Components they need as they need
them or want to explore them. That way, a user gets more and more
proficient as they add more and more options, and they only add the
options that they need or want in the interface.
J.
