Re: Arlo, a little QA comment regarding your interview withlinux.com

[John Sullivan <sullivan eazel com>]

Kevin Cullis wrote:

>
> > thing you're looking for, it's harder to come up to speed on which features are
> > important. Sure, any given menu item seems like it isn't adding much complexity,
> > but you have to think about this in terms of the big picture too -- you have to
> > fit this decision into the context of all the other potential such decisions; you
> > can't think of it only in isolation
>
> Either I'm too new or I'm missing something. How can having 200 menus
> with few dialog boxes be more complex than 50 menus with more dialog
> boxes with tabs?  Didn't Apple's studies show that menus were faster?
> I'm a process type person, and I think in terms of getting things done,
> the quicker the better because reducing cycle time makes me more
> productive. Of course, we can debate "quicker" and "better," but I would
> leave that up to the users and find out how THEY would consider it.  But
> dog gone, it seems like we're reinventing the wheel instead of making it
> a tire!

Menus are faster. Putting every possible command into a menu is not necessarily the
best "design for efficiency" though, because not every command is equally important.
If you put even every obscure otherwise-hidden feature into a menu item, then those
obscure otherwise-hidden features will become less obscure (good!) at the cost of
making the common, important features more obscure (bad!) because they are now hidden
in a sea of apparently-equal-in-importance other menu items.

John