Niall Kavanagh wrote:
>
> On Sat, 14 Oct 2000, Jeffry Smith wrote:
>
> >
> > Of course, some of us view this (the MS uniform look & feel) as a
> > drawback - I personally don't work the way MS thinks I should. one of
> > the great things about Linux (& Unix) is there is no native UI -
> > everything is a shell & I can choose the shell that works the way I
> > do!
> >
>
> That's great for those of us lucky enough to be comfortable figuring
> things out for ourselves. I assure you we are the minority.
>
> I'm not talking about tools, I'm talking about applications... things that
> neophytes should reasonably expect to grok without straining their tiny
> little brains too much. ;)
>
Have you ever trained complete newbies? I mean those who've NEVER
SEEN a computer? I have. There is NOTHING EASY about computers.
Typical questions I got: what's the mouse for? What's the difference
between single and double clicking? Why is that item under that
pull-down menu? How come this command doesn't work this way? Why
does THAT COMMAND do THAT? Why don't they call it X instead? I agree
we need to make it as easy as possible, but I think we need to
recognize that:
1. It does take some work, there is no such thing as an intuitive
interface.
2. Each human's brain works somewhat differently, don't expect them
to all think your way is the only way.
An example of this: Way back when (before Windows), the office I was
in had the choice of WP, Wordstar, or Word. My officemate loved
Wordstar, because of the . commands in the file. I liked WP. Another
office mate thought we were nuts, that the Word way of pull-downs was
the way to go, he didn't want to know about how the formatting was
done. Were any of us wrong? No, we just thought differently.
> While I also do not think or work the way Microsoft thinks I should, I
> most certainly do not think/work the way the Gnome foundation does, KDE,
> Raster (of E fame), etc. etc.
>
Sounds like we need another UI project for some more folks.
> Microsoft apps may be broken, but they're mostly all broken the same way.
> I would be very surprised to find a person who does NOT feel Linux needs a
> consistant desktop, and having one certainly does not mean giving up the
> configurability we all enjoy.
>
It needs a consistent desktop in the metaphor that THAT PERSON uses
(i.e. a way for the apps to interface to the user interface that
matches the way that person thinks). Linux DOES NOT need a single
consistent UI, because I can guarantee you that there will be people
for whom that is the wrong interface.
BTW: Having taught newbies, I can guarantee, not only are MS apps not
broken in the same way, they break them in new ways each new release.
I love people who tell me "Windows is the standard" - I ask "which
one: Windows 3.0, 3.11, Windows for Workgroups, Windows95, Windows98,
NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, Windows 2000?" Each of them is different.
Even better, I found out that their international versions are broken
in whole new ways! Example: they move such things as "Font" to
different menus - so you can't just translate the course (i.e. "go to
the 3rd pulldown, then click on the 4th item" Do that, and find out
they're doing something completely different than what you are!)
jeff
jeff smith
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
thought for the day: He who knows that enough is enough will always
have enough.
-- Lao Tsu
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