Re: User interface suggestions

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom idecnet com>]

jdub aphid net (2000-10-04 at 0306.42 +1100):
> The advantage of having nice big buttons instead of radio buttons is that
> the modality is implicit - you can only hit one button, plus it's a one-step
> process. Both of these provide a strong spatial understanding of the
> interface, and give greater opportunity for learned muscle-memory responses.

Reminds me the Motif philoshopy: user must have 1024 or bigger
desktop, and does not care about blank spaces ("bigger is better").

<RANT>
Can someone, please, explain me why one size should suit everyone?
Some things I never understand about GUI design:

- "You like icons, icons are good for user interface": not for me,
distracting, hard to understand... (and stupid for blind people, I
have some friends, and making icons the important part instead of a
plus or decor really give them problems). And you can say whatever you
want about scientific researchs, there is always people different to
the majority (we are minority but we exist).

- "You have big screens and you only run one app at a time": my
screens are small or medium, I run many apps, and yes, I use desktops
and other tools to organize, but sometimes I have lots of windows at
the same time in the same screen (a long Gimp session is an example).

- "You click everywhere, it easy": no it is not once you have at least
one hand over the keyboard and hit some keycombos. And sometimes, you
have no clues about where to click, you have to waste time moving the
mouse everywhere (a mad trend in webpages lately, I want to reach
info, not waste my time discovering it, or miss something until a
friend tolds me the "secret click").

- "Complex themes are not a problem, they are cool": sorry, I do not
buy that, I use a green ThinIce theme (plain design, fast to use), and
try to remove anything that is just decorative (but I am not an ugly
lover, that is not the same). Go to themes.org and watch the photos,
you will see a wide range of styles in wm and toolkit colors & shapes,
screen arrangement, even shell prompt. Not only complex.

IMO, instead of GUI we should call it IUI, Icon User Interface.
Or CUI, Console User Interface.
</RANT>

BTW, I have seen more Whistler photos (same site), and the logout seem
to have changed to a less "game console" style. Some people is trying
to copy pre-beta things, which is not right IMO, trying to copy Foo
just for fun is bad cos if you are going to copy something, you must
copy cos it is good (be it MS, Apple or whatever).

Can we focus more in helping the user and less in "k00lness"? For
example, thumbnail preview for images instead of plain icons is one
thing I like when searching for a given image (not as defauls), cos is
a good use of icons, you see the name and the content in one pass,
while plain icons only adds more click space but says the same than
the name (no hidden extensions, thanks, you can not know what is
extension and what name in a system where you are free to use dots).

GSR