On 04 26, 07, at 10:39 PM, rexonf wrote:
On 4/26/07, Daniel Escasa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I remember reading this maybe in some online forum: In brief, he tried
using AbiWord because he considered OpenOffice.org "bloated". Then he
needed a
feature that OOo Writer had and Abi didn't. Still consider that bloat?
OpenOffice is not bloated in terms of features. It's level with M$
Office 97, which for me is just about right. OpenOffice is simply
low performant, slow startup and eats lots of memory.
oo's "slow startup and eats a lot of memory problem? it has
improved over the years but still, we got to blame java for that.
i was watching David Pogue's TEDTalk titled "Simplicity Sells".
Microsoft had an experiment a couple of years ago. They wrote a word
processor. Just a word processor. it didn't do web pages, it didn't
have database access. nada. it was called microsoft write and quite
frankly, it didn't "sell" to great reviews. i didn't use it. did any
of you use it?
Pogue argued that people like to have a bit of this or a bit of that
because "they might need it someday". He called it the "SUV mentality".
For about a week now, i've been writing notes and at least two blog
entries on a small text editor called "textmate". to be quite frank,
there is something liberating in writing on a text editor. (i did
that because i'm using a development version of camino... and
sometimes when it opens a page with flash it just breaks and what
i've written would go down with it, hence the text editor. which,
looking back is a blessing in disguise.)
anyway long story short: while i've always used vi when editing
configuration files or writing the simple script on linux and in
fact, vim is one of the first apps i always install on a fresh linux
box. i've never really cared much for simplicity on my desktop. and
having written notes and two blogs using textmate. i must say, change
of heart: imho, why would i need OO, other than for formatting
purposes or for its spreadsheet? then again, just because you've got
a cup holder in the car doesn't mean you have to use it. because,
someone else may need that feature.
more than "bloat" i think 1) making our software more intelligent, 2)
make life easier for our users by making our software more intuitive
and easy to use, 3) stop treating our users like idiots, even when
time after time we know a lot are, and 4) make software actually work.
in simplicity sells: Pogue said the old palm had tap counters who
determined how long a user would need to do a particular task. if it
took more than three taps--- it was too complicated.
he also said that software should be more intelligent. does it ever
annoy you guys for example: in friendster, you need to delete a
photo, you press delete and it asks you again if you're really sure
you wanna delete? i find it SO annoying and particularly a waste of
bandwidth. also to prove a point, pogue asked: why is it that to
shut down a PC in windows, you need to press a button called "start" ?
one other point i'd like to raise, which quite frankly david pogue
was right in raising: sometimes, may be just sometimes... wouldn't
it be nice for developers for every couple of versions to just do
some "spring cleaning" and fix all the problems in the code/make more
efficient and actually make life easier for users instead of packing
in "new cool features" to a software release?
that said, someone's junk is another man's need so i quite agree:
software "bloat" is a relative and religious term. like vim v. emacs.
kde v. gnome. macs v. windows. microkernel v. monolithic kernel. use
it, don't use it. does it really matter? more importantly what really
matters i think is that we should make software 1) more intelligent,
2) we should make life easier for our users and 3) stop treating
users of our software, even when we know a lot of the time they are,
like idiots.
just my two cents.
------------
Cocoy Dayao
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
big mango - http://arkangel1a.blogspot.com
"People who are really serious about software should make their own
hardware." --Alan Kay
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