Re: [Usability]Keeping the Quit menu item

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 19Mar2003 09:39PM (-0500), Havoc Pennington wrote:

> > Give users a little more credit...
> 
> It's not about credit.  It's geek think when we assume someone would
> be proud of knowing those things, or feel they should know them, or
> want 'credit' for knowing them. Nobody cares but us geeks.
> 
> Do I think people can figure out what a process is if they try?
> Sure. Do I think they have any reason to need to? No. The latter
> rhetorical question is the proper one.

Most mainstream GUIs have Quit, and they have undergone a lot of
rigorous user testing. So it seems hard to believe that it requires a
lot of geeky knowledge or a grasp of the process concept to understand
Quit. If anything, removing it will result in people who switch from
other platforms thinking "why can't I quit?" and feeling frustrated.

I'm not saying it's impossible to come up with something better than
existing UIs. But your argument that Quit is too hard to understand
seems unlikely to be right.

It seems to me like a better improvement would be a way to see running
applications. 

Document-centric interface sounds like a nice idea in theory, but not
all apps or windows are document-oriented. And users can understand
the concept of installing an application, but I don't think
"installing support for a new kind of window/document" would be as
clear.

Regards,

Maciej