On Tue, 2003-02-18 at 21:40, Joshua Adam Ginsberg wrote:
> Mark -
>
> It's as beautifully simple and elegant as it is well thought out and
> explained... I would love such a file manager...
Thanks :)
> Unfortunately, most computer users are not like this... To us such a
> solution is extremely simple and elegant in that there are only a
> handful of fixed rules of interaction (DnD, Context Menus, etc.)... but
> computer users who are not wired like you and me need visual choices of
> what to do... this is why most users are terrified and confused by the
> CLI; there's no visual option of what to do except the blinking cursor
> indicating you should type something... these users need the visual
> presence of back, up, forward, home, location bar, etc. to make it clear
> that these are among the options of what they can do... you and I might
> say it's quite obvious that these choices are in the context menu or
> they are irrelevant within this paradigm, but the context menu is hidden
> until summoned and technically illiterate people don't operate on an
> abstract enough level to adopt paradigms...
Let me give you my experience with non-technical users some common file
managers.
I know 4 or 5 people who are very proficient with microsoft office, if
fact for 3 of them their job depends on it. None of them have ever used
Windows Explorer for anything. They don't know the filesystem layout
like you or me so the location bar is useless to them, similar with the
tree sidebar. The whole thing just scares them. These experiences could
be specific to me, but almost every non-technical windows user I've ever
me, even quite advanced ones, don't use windows explorer.
Even among my "power windows user" friends they are much more likely to
browse in a clicky way from my computer than use the location bar.
A while back I was talking to some non-technical Mac users. They are by
no means hackers. They use ther macs for the web and wp. But they seemed
almost empowered by their OS compared to windows users. They actually
felt comfortable with the finder(or whatever it was in os8/9). The same
applies to OsX. The finder has no confusing tree view, location bar, or
excesses of menus. It does have a minimal toolbar which would probably
be necessary to add to my idea for the "zoom" and "view as" as up, stop
and refresh controls.
> Feel free to differ... maybe I'm just spouting some deeply held
> misconceptions within the school of UI design... but regardless your
> solution is beautiful, elegant, and simple... we should all be so
> lucky...
I think that you are right that power users like me or you love this
idea for it's simplicity. But I think that the same would be true for
non-technical users. The people who are likely to complain are the
people who give out every time we do something that is different to
windows. The people who just want a Windows Explorer Clone.
An oo file manager may be totally different to something that person X
has used before, but the only truly intutive interface is the nipple, so
that leaves us with the option to give people a copy of windows that
they already know or give them something that is really easy to learn.
Which I think this oo model would be.
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