Mark D Lew wrote:
On Jan 12, 2006, at 10:37 AM, Simon Troup wrote:
Is it just me or are the arrows the wrong way around for selecting which
set of lyrics to edit in the edit lyrics dialogue box.
I feel that way about ALL dialog boxes in which one clicks the up arrow
to decrement and the down arrow to increment. To name just one examples
out of scores, if I open up the window to set my system's clock and
calendar, clicking the up arrow moves me to Jan 13, and clicking the
down arrow moves me to Jan 11.
I don't know why, but by my intuition, that's backward. To my way of
thinking, clicking down, as if continuing down the page, should make the
number become more/forward/later, whille clicking up should make the
number become less/backward/earlier.
Of course I realize that the standard practice in software is to do
exactly the opposite, but even after years of struggling with it, it
still feels wrong to me, and I still click the wrong arrow as often as not.
Wow! I've never had any problem with the concept that the up-arrow in
such situations moves to a higher number. I think it all depends on how
we imagine whichever continuum those buttons increment/decrement is
organized.
For instance, I have no problem imagining 2 as a higher number than 1,
so it's easy for me to click the up-arrow to raise the number from 1 to
2, and the down-arrow to lower it from 1 to 0.
However, with alphabets, I imagine A as the top and Z as the bottom, so
when such a setup makes me click the up-arrow to move from A to B,
that's when I have problems, because there shouldn't be anything to move
up from A to, in my mind. I should click the down-arrow to move from A
to B.
Same with layers -- I can easily imagine layer 1 as being the top layer
and layer 4 being the bottom layer.
But I can also see the dichotomy in my mental image of pure numbers
moving up from 1 to 2, but numbered-items moving down from item-1 to item-2.
I've been using computers for so long I don't know if my thinking is
conditioned by my computer usage or if it was already in place.
But I think that such things are the main basis in the problems any of
us have (and the concurrent complaints) with any/all user-interfaces.
We think they're great and intuitive when their logic follows our own,
and we think they're stupid/poorly-developed/counter-intuitive when
their logic runs counter to our own.
There isn't any universally-agreeable, really intuitive way of doing
things. At least as far as I understand things. The moment you make
something "intuitive" for person A, you've likely made it
"counter-intuitive" for person B.
So the poor people who design user interfaces are always receiving the
same messages of complaint, no matter how they alter the user interface.
It's just the people sending the messages which change from complaint
to compliment or vice-versa.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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