26 Jul
2005
26 Jul
'05
12:46 a.m.
Last Monday 25 July 2005 19:34, Lee Revell was like:
On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 10:46 +0200, Mario Lang wrote:
> That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on something
> is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
> a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
> buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
> "it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything
> about it" attitude is childish.
Yes it's childish. However this is what the vast majority of 'normal' users
do. My son (who is himself, a child) does this with most new games for about
10 minutes and then turns round and says "Dad, how does this work?". To which
I answer calmly and patiently that I don't have a sweet Danny La Rue. Does he
ever read the manual? does he even go to the setup tab to find out how the
keybindings are set? Of course not.
I disagree violently with this line of reasoning.
Software should
ALWAYS work the way the user expects it to unless there is a DAMN GOOD
REASON, for example if you are offering a much more powerful interface
than the user is used to.
Yeah, the spacebar should ALWAYS fire the big gun.
For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use
"Ctrl-F" to 'Find in page'.
Except Evolution, which forces you to use "Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in
page', because they have already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'.
This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing it the normal
way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability purposes.
Do you find that the developers respond well to being told this?-]
Most things that aren't understandable to a child are usually nonsense. It
follows that we must only send them to school for indoctrination purposes.
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk