[linux-audio-dev] mouse wheel behavior and RFC: human interface guidelines

[Pete Bessman]

At Sat, 21 Aug 2004 18:35:44 +0200,
Melanie wrote:
> 
> Left is generally associated with up, right with down, as we read
> left to right, top to bottom. Therefore, up MUST map to left, down
> MUST map to right, otherwise, non-mathematically minded people get
> uttely confused.

This is perhaps the archetypal example of how a useful concept (making
connections between the UI and the Real World) gets turned into a
religion at the expense of that which it putatively helps and the
profit of...

uh...

yeah.

There's too much of this everywhere, but the infection seems to be
particularly insidious in CompSci (I LOST 25 POUNDS IN TWO WEEKS WITH
OOP) and UI design (pixels, being small, become unusable in light of
Fitt's law; they MUST be discarded).

I guarantee you that the last thing on 99.8% of users' minds when
they're adjusting a horizontal volume slider is "This is kind of like
reading a book, which goes left to right and top to bottom; and if we
assume an association between beginnings and ends, then it follows
that left and up are vaguely synonymous.  Therefore, to decrease the
volume with my mousewheel, I MUST spin up."

Bah, humbug.

--Pete

<http://www.gazuga.net>

"Nothing great was ever achieved by being realistic!" --Tom Venuto

P.S. Guess what profession/hobby the remaining 0.2% have.