Re: [Evolution] Close window when deleting?

[Russell Fulton <r fulton auckland ac nz>]

> On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 10:15 -0500, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> > several "designing the perfect ui" documents I've read say that more
> > options means bad ui, and that limiting the number of options makes a
> > better ui. 

As a general principle this is OK, however all design decisions are
compromises and any one writing on UI design knows this (or if they
don't then they should not be writing about it). All such docs I have
seen try to spell out guidelines to be kept in mind when making design
decisions, for the most part it is not the author's intention to make
hard and fast rules.  Instead they try to draw attention to areas where
you have to be careful.  I'm sure no one actually said "that more
options means bad ui".  What was probably meant (regardless of exactly
how it was expressed) was "be careful when choosing configuration
options -- remember that having lots of options can confuse users".

Some complex systems need lots of options to cater for a wide variety of
usages.  Removing these options will seriously impair the usability of
the product.  Email software definitely comes into this category.

There are ways to deal with this sort of problem, one is to use what
might be described as meta configuration where at the start of the
configuration you get asked your level of experience, beginner,
familiar, expert and the defaults and menus change accordingly.  If you
started out as beginner and later find you want to change something you
can change the user-level to get to the item in question.

Cheers, Russell