Slashdot currently has an article about the alpha launch of Raskin's The
Humane Interface ("Archy").http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/14/187254 This thread < http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146106&cid=12237175 > brings up Raskin's idea of the elimination of applications and a few other ideas that seem similar to the ideas and goals of Étoilé. Particularly striking, and what makes me much more interested in a project like Étoilé than THE, is what one poster said, quoted below: "... I think the approach to such an interface has to be mostly evolutionary -- instead of dictating a unified environment, create a framework that encourages (and indeed, attracts) developers and users to adopt something closer to that ideal form." Éoilé seems to be an evolutionary step from current desktops -- unified commands, elimination of modes/applications where possible, all documents open and available at once, etc. It doesn't say "Ditch everything we know about how people use computer interfaces now and start over." Where THE goes wrong is it assumes people are willing to make the huge mental jump required in order to use that system. People are quite often scared of change. You need to take baby steps to get your users where you want them -- let them learn UI changes a bit at a time, in a natural fashion over many releases, so that when they arrive at Point Z, it won't seem so foreign as it would have had they not gone through Point B, Point C, Point D... . J.
