On 25 May 2001, at 12:58, Tuomas Kuosmanen wrote:
> On 22 May 2001 02:09:00 +0200, Branko Collin wrote:
> > On 21 May 2001, at 17:47, Raphael Quinet wrote:
> >
> > > So in parallel with the discussion about the distribution of
> > > plug-ins, there should be a discussion about how to organize the
> > > menus. One idea that was proposed on this list some time ago was
> > > to be able to limit the number of things that are included in the
> > > menus. Some M$ applications offer reduced menus for beginners,
> >
> > What the menus in MS Word do is show the most important items plus
> > those items you use the most.
>
> There is one big problem with this: tutorials. People are already
> having big problems following the tutorials that are written for
> gimp-before-the-menu-reorganization, now I think it could be just
> horribly hard if the tutorial says "Select Image -> Colors -> Filter
> Pack" and if that was considered "Advanced" while our user chose
> "Beginner" when starting Gimp for the first time. So it would not be
> in the menus at all.
You could have a special menurc for the tutorial or, better yet, just
tell the user to switch to advanced menu settings.
That is the great thing about tutorials: the user is willing to be
told stuff, as long as it is not too outrageous. Clearly, one cannot
learn how to use a program if the teacher and the student use
different interfaces.
The biggest problem with the whole plug-in thing is that a changing
program sometimes calls for changing interfaces. And the number one
rule in interface design (AFAIK) is that you do not change an
interface that the user already knows, no matter how bad it is.
When catering for growing websites, the usual solution is to add
different interfaces. For instance, a site that would work with just
links now gets a search engine, a site map, a site tour, et cetera.
--
branko collin
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