25 Jun
2004
25 Jun
'04
9:37 p.m.
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 03:38:10PM -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
On Fri, 2004-06-25 at 12:00, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
See my other reply.
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 06:54:20PM +0200,
Thorsten Wilms wrote:
It is not necessarily about education. Requiring the user to read documentation to learn
about functionality
he would not even expect is not an option.
Have education levels gone down *that* far ? I think this is a lot of the reason European
(especially Dutch) design
is so much more advanced than American. In the States, a fire exit sign
says 'EXIT'. In the Netherlands, it is an icon that unmistakably means
'this way out', without any text required. This is *much* harder to do
than just 'EXIT' in big red letters, but required. If there is a fire
in Amsterdam for example, you will have people from 5-10 different
countries running for the exit.
Yes, that's true. I remember driving in the US, and how I found it very
odd for all the roadsigns to tell me in plain English what I was or wasn't
supposed to do. But 'graphic' signs can be completely useless as well.
At work I have a telephone with something like 20 extra buttons besides
the numeric keypad. They all have mysterious signs on them that defy both
my imagination and logic reasoning. I'd much prefer for them to be labeled
'Hold', 'Transfer', etc. than by the totally uncomprehensible things there
are now.
With regards to radial movement, the only
self-explanatory way to do it
that I have seen is mousewheel-on-mouseover. People will figure this
out with no documentation at all. Please make your radial controls work
this way unless there is a good reason not to.
If you have a mousewheel :-)
--
FA