User interface, shortcuts and everything

[January Weiner 3 <jweiner1 ix urz uni-heidelberg de>]

Hello,

> Yes, it's a difficult thing to get right.  Photoshop's Undo mechanism is
> certainly powerful, but it's not exactly intuitive-- although it's good
> that you can also use it at the simple "hit ^Z to undo the last thing
> you did" level, which is all most users need.

Yes, but the question is, if I am for example typing, should the ^Z 
        - undo the typing of the last character
        - ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, sentence
        - ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, paragraph
        - ,, everything since last operation which wasn't typing
        - ,, everything typed during the last 5 minutes
        - restore the state of the document as it was at the last save

I think that all undo systems should allow undoing at least a couple of
actions. Still, there remains the question of "most users" or "common user"
or "normal user", returning like a boomerang in each such a discussion.
Everybody has countless examples about users "stupidity". I wouldn't call
it exactly this way. An example: a collegue of mine has noted today that
there is a big, red button on a web page I created which says "full info on
this oligonucleotide". The web page has been there for the past two years,
and she was using it on a daily basis. Also, she is very intelligent, a
good scientist and all. Another friend of mine did once the following in
Word: she typed "ctrl-a" (selected all the text), typed "a" (all the text
vanished), got scared, *saved* everything, *closed* Word and phoned a
friend of mine for help. Nope, there were no backups. And yes, I think this
was the very intuitive way of behaving, for after all "save" connotates
with "security" and "saving your data". 

> True  :)  Provided you realise what you've done, and how the shortcut
> assignments work.  It's not inconceivable that a user unfamiliar with
> gtk apps could change a shortcut by mistake, though, and then find out
> later that one of his shortcuts had just "stopped working".

Of course. And, another problem, one day you think that ctrl-o is an
intuitive shortcut for opening a new document, and next day -- that it is
the perfect shortcut for opening the options dialog. I am slowly drifting
into the position to admit that you're right and that this feature should
be disabled by default.

> Things are starting to happen on that front, though, and not just with
> the GNOME accessibility project.  There are other efforts out there
> making Linux accessible to the blind and vision impaired too-- for
> example:
> http://leb.net/blinux
> http://ocularis.sourceforge.net 
> http://www.speechinfo.org/fdawg

I wonder what are the advantages of Linux as opposed to other systems, but
I don't think this is the perfect place to discuss those things.

> Well, basically it's a big flashing, moving arrow pointing to the Start
> button on the Windows taskbar the first time you log on, accompanied by
> some text saying "you need to press this to do anything".  Or words to
> that effect  :)

Well. Even with the most "user-friendly" computer you have to learn some
basics. MacOS apple menu doesn't even have anything as communicative as
"start" written on it, and lots of people who really do not know anything
about computers deal with it w-o any problems.

> No need to apologise, that's a perfectly valid thing to care about in
> our open source world  :)  Unfortunately if too many of those sorts of
> features make it back into the mainstream release of the software, it's
> sort of inevitable that usability will eventually begin to suffer. 
> Which is a problem that not too many of the really big open source
> projects have got completely under control yet, IMHO.

Of course. My chief complaint about most of the projects is that they
effort is useless for a poor guy with a 486 laptop, such as myself. I am
proud to say here at this place that I was able to create a suite of biomol
tools which, though CLI, run more then just fine on such a box.

> There are one or two free online "books" floating around too, like Joel
> Spolsky's "UI Design for programmers" at
> http://static.userland.com/gems/joel/uibookcomplete.htm ... 

Thanks for all the information. 

A quotation from the abovementioned book:

> A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the
> user thought it would.

Well, then, we will have to wait for those telepathic UI before we can even
start to think about creating a well-designed user interface.

Anyway, I don't think this is a 100% right attitude, because in most cases
"user" translates to "the majority of users". Linux + open source programs
used to be a fine choice for me mostly because in no aspect I am a
majority (I expect that the 'j' key moves the cursor down, for example),
and I can adapt it easily. Right now everything starts looking like
Windows-MacOS hybrid on acid and/or growth hormone, minus lots of
integration issues which are available in those two systems. At the same
time, the environment looses the consistency it used to have. How many gtk+
actually *do* have a man page? How many of them respond to the "-h" option?
The whatis database used to be one of the more useful tools. The nouvelle
cuisine de logiciels renders it useless.

Another quotation:

> Users don't read stuff
> Users can't use the mouse
> Users can't remember anything

Again, "users" translates into "majority of users". Note however that
programs fully based on this assumptions will be quite impotent. This may
be fine for some simple tools used from time to time, but not for a tool
which I have to use everyday during my work. If I buy a toaster, I don't
have to read the manual to know how it works. If I buy an enzyme at my
work, I start reading tons of manuals even before I order it. There are
some things that should be created for you, as a user, as intuitive and
easy to do as possible; others you'll have to learn one way or the other.
If you are doing molecular genetics, you have to know what the program
blasta is doing, independently on whether you use the CLI or a nice,
user-friendly web interface (or my Arka). Learning a couple of easy issues
about the interface is peanuts compared to the problem of selecting the
right score matrix for your sequence. I am fed up with this "we have to
make OS programs user friendly in order to conquer the world". Well I don't
care about conquering the world.

Sorry for my rant. Signature is random, but it fits well (no prize for
telling where it is from).

j.

----)-\//-///-----------------------------------January-Weiner-3-------
Talking, talking, spinning a spell, pale skin of words that closes me in like 
a coffin. Not in a language that anyone any longer understands. Rushing, 
degenerate mutter of noises I send out before me wherever I creep...