> On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 10:15 -0500, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote: > > several "designing the perfect ui" documents I've read say that more > > options means bad ui, and that limiting the number of options makes a > > better ui.
As a general principle this is OK, however all design decisions are compromises and any one writing on UI design knows this (or if they don't then they should not be writing about it). All such docs I have seen try to spell out guidelines to be kept in mind when making design decisions, for the most part it is not the author's intention to make hard and fast rules. Instead they try to draw attention to areas where you have to be careful. I'm sure no one actually said "that more options means bad ui". What was probably meant (regardless of exactly how it was expressed) was "be careful when choosing configuration options -- remember that having lots of options can confuse users". Some complex systems need lots of options to cater for a wide variety of usages. Removing these options will seriously impair the usability of the product. Email software definitely comes into this category. There are ways to deal with this sort of problem, one is to use what might be described as meta configuration where at the start of the configuration you get asked your level of experience, beginner, familiar, expert and the defaults and menus change accordingly. If you started out as beginner and later find you want to change something you can change the user-level to get to the item in question. Cheers, Russell _______________________________________________ evolution maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolution
