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Let's Kill the Hard Disk Icon
Kellym writes "The desktop metaphor is under attack these days. Usability experts and computer scientists like Don Norman, David Gelernter and George Robertson have declared the metaphor "dead." The complexities blamed on the desktop metaphor are not the fault of the metaphor itself, but of its implementation in mainstream systems. The default hard disk icon is part of the desktop metaphor. And the icon is the cause of the complexity created by the desktop"
Yes, they are correct in saying that having the hard drive being somehow subservient to the desktop is confusing and well, wrong.
However, in the end it doesn't really matter. Why? Because there are either people who understand why this is wrong and therefore it doesn't matter to them, or there are people whose understanding of a computer is one that it would require more then changing the hard drive icon to make them undestand.
That, and I'm willing to bet that neither of these sorts of people really care one way or the other.
Well, it's just my opinion I suppose, and you have the right to disagree. But I've always thought the recursiveness of the desktop didn't really matter.
Call me old fashioned, but I for one am _not_ baffled by the vast regions of "vague space" that my file systems offer me. I don't want hundreds of stacked desktops for everything I do. This might be nice for Joe Random Luser, but if you intend to do _LOTS_ of things with your computer, and interconnect them, having the power of a file system at your disposal helps a lot.
It is possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate via the mouse.
Yeah, that's the way it goes - the same "usability experts" who have brought us the "tree control for everything" metaphor that totally sucks in large directory trees now want to oversimplify even more. Perhaps, if the mouse is incapable of filling your needs, you should consider alternatives... such as the keyboard and a sensible autocompletion. Every time I see someone use a keyboard based navigation tool (Windows Commander comes to my mind, or bash completion), they're about ten times faster than click-move-click-move sequences.
Well I have to say I don't agree with this article. By it's own admissions, a desktop is a limiting space. It is true that for novice users a desktop metaphor is a comforting feeling and most do not leave it, but navigating the complex structure of an entire computer via desktops would be silly. It does make some sense to organize a hard-disk, but this is what the filesystem is for. If I read the article correctly, it implies scraping the tradional rooted filesystem in place of one in which is organized into several main points of interaction via a desktop metaphor.
We would then have a different desktop for different parts of the system -- e.g. an operating system desktop which would expose internal controls, configuration files, utility programs and other settings, several program desktops, etc.
In pratice it sounds good but I don't think anyone will take to it very well or it will be that different. In fact, most desktops are just glorified directories anyway that are always open and at the lowest level. So what's the point of difference, because I fail to see one.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
About the time I got to him describing Linux GUIs as "simpler and are easier to use and manage" I was starting to realize that while the author starts off with an appeal to authority "X, Y, Z say I'm right!" the article was mostly just a few ill-explained conjectures interspersed with a bunch of filler.
Where's some real data on desktop usability? Surely if the desktop is considered so wretched, there'd be a score of empirical HCI studies that:
1) Proposed an alternative
2) Actually went out and prototyped the alternative
3) Showed that the alternative was more efficient than the desktop
But I'm not seeing anything coming out that would seem to indicate that the desktop was dead.
That article is just daft. It seeems to be saying that a hard disk directory structure is much better than a desktop because you can have unilimed space and organise it by directories, and then goes on to say it should be abolished and replaced by multiple desktops.
Maybe I missed the point. I hope so, then the article would make sense.
In my opinion the whole desktop metaphore is flawed. The screen should just be a view of the hard disk, but each user should have their own namespace on the disk and not be able to even see others files, or there system files without running special tools.
The problem with windows is that sometimes "My Computer" is a subdirectory of the disk and sometimes the disk is a sub-item of My Computer. It confuses me and I'm supposed to know what I'm doing!
Sig is taking a break!
Pardon me, I don't mean to flame these well-meaning researchers, but... anyone who finds the drool-proof Fisher-price desktop interfaces of "modern" commercial OSes "complex", after 15-20 years for the concepts to sink into the culture, and umpty-zillion dollars in usability testing, HCI factors researchers, Xerox, MIT MediaLab, Apple, XP, blah blah blah... probably shouldn't be left on their own with a box of matches, ya-know-what-i-mean?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
My motorbike has an oil light on it.
It comes on when the bike is running out of oil so I know when to put more in. To run a motorbike I mush know how to do this and (basicly) how the engine works. (Unless I want to be totaly reliant on a mechanic)
A computer is exactly the same.
To use it, you must know basicly how it works.....such as what a hard disk is! You cant oversimplify!
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Since were killing off all the "evil icons" these days, i.e. Joe Camel, Barney, Usama Bin Laden, etc, go ahead - whack the evil hard disk icon too. Next on the chopping block - Ronald McDonald and that annoying whiny PrimeCo pink alien guy!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
However, the real problem I see with the article is they don't suggest how users would deal with partitioning their space if one got rid of the harddrive icon. What I mean is, suppose I create a new directory under my root desktop, how do I specify which harddisk it should be on to better divide the free space I have on each disk? Surely they wouldn't propose that Mac end users should play around with auto mount lists as is done in the UNIX world?
I suppose one solution would be to use logical volumes to treat all harddrives on a system as one single volume, but if so that's a much bigger change than just eliminating the hard-disk icon, and the implications of it should be better explored (if that's the sort of solution they were going for).
Personally, I dont think anyone is particularly confused by hard-disk icons, and think the article is just blowing smoke...The article never really tries to back up its arguments or give real-world alternatives except at a very superficial level.
I don't see the disk icon as a problem at all, I prefer that to cluttering my desktop with lots of folder icons. Maybe it's just me and my warped mind, but I find teh hierarchical anture of the disk's contents very easy to navigate and explore, I use it constantly.
As to the limitations of the desktop - isn't the desktop contents just a directory on the drive anyway?
The mouse can't leae the desktop? sure it can - if you have virtual desktops - I just hover my mouse at one of the screen edges and it flips to the next panel. I use virtual desktops to access the multitude of application windows I have open, not to organize my filing system and have it cluttered with a zillion icons - I'd never be able to find anything!
As another poster here said, power users who understand the file system on their machines don't have a problem with it.
.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
I'm all for the sentiment behind "The vague space of the hard disk should not exist for you.", but that's just a bad bad bad idea until computers are rock solid. No I don't mean Windows 2000 solid, or even debian Potato solid, I mean solid like my old 286 machine that hasn't had a software update for eons.
At the moment my other half knows what a floppy disk is (it looks like a floppy disk, and you can put files on it). She knows that the "hard disk" is a "big floppy disk inside the computer", and that she should copy from the later to the former whenever she needs to keep a safe copy. This is a good thing, because she knows where her stuff is, and so do I (as sys admin). As soon as you start blurring the lines, it makes it harder for people to control their own files.
I think it's right to be pushing the state of the art in the interface. However, I have this conservative feeling that the current status quo matches well to the actual reality of buggy software and hw/sw failures. Once we cross over into "you dont need to know that" space, we better be sure that we actually don't need to know it, otherwise we'll be SOL.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
Their thesis is that giving users access to the file system is bad, because they fill their directories with crap.
So, since people don't fill their desktops with quite as much crap simply because it has an visual limit. I can get about 100 icons on mine.
So, since 100 files isn't enough for my data needs, they suggest I have multiple desktops.
I get a feeling that this will over-complex things.
Also, the standard "file manager" type view is a staple of e-mail systems. How do the authors suggest replacing this?
Hmmm. I dunno. Won't it add extra complexity as you have to distinguish between persistant icons that are on every desktop, and the transient ones that are just on one. Since everything the user sees is a shortcut, you also have to distinguish between deleting the shortcut and deleting the file. (delete once the last link is gone? maybe)
Anyhow, easy enough to test their theory, since you can configure both Linux and XP to work exactly like thay describe.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
The first time I saw an Apple machine other than an IIe I was very confused by the fact that the actual drive wasn't the 'root' of the system. Even though this is only in idea - it killed me, I was confused. Even Windows (3.1) used C:\!
/, it is the root of the system."
/etc where your configuration data is stored!"
/usr - you'll find the actual programs and more there!"
/home/username/.kde/desktop [or c:\windows\desktop or even c:\windows\profiles\username\desktop\ ], but it's the top of your system. Under that is your hard drive... that is where the desktop is kept."
Now KDE, Windows 9x, and many other use the 'Desktop' as the 'root' of the system. You'll notice that this trick is only performed by the 'userland' and not the actual system. This is because it's common sense. Your computer doesn't want to look for things starting from a folder/directory/area that is actually buried deep within the system!
I say, banish the 'Desktop'! It confuses users. Teach the file tree! Standardize the file tree!
No more systems where programs store themselves anywhere! No more systems that show the drive under the Desktop! No more systems that show other things on the same level as the drive!
Why confuse users? Teach them;
"This is
"This is
"This is
"But this is your Home/My Documents/Desktop. There are others similar to yours, but this one is yours."
"However, it doesn't sit on top of the rest of the system!"
Maybe I don't get it. I thought it would be easier to teach new users things they already understand.
"This is the desktop, it's the top level, well kinda, it's actually in
Get your Unix fortune now!
This idea sounds cool, but the argument is weak.
The whole point of the tree-like structure of the harddisk is managed-complexity. Hierarchial structures allow the user to ascend the descend the hierachy, performing operations that are similar in execution, but differing in context.
What happens when you have 1 million odd bits of stuff to manage? How would such a user switch between desktops, looking for the right window to do his stuff on?
You need some kind of tree, not a linear sequence of desktops! Say maybe one for administrative configuration. Let's call that etc. And one for executables, let's call that bin. And then how about some tmporary space to play around in. On wait
Part of my job is to teach computer basics and gui navigation skills to newbies. with that said, imagine knowing nothing about a computer, and trying to navigate through it without having a point of refrence. Its like being in a new country, but having no "home" or place to stay where you start from every morning.
I reccomend to new users to save files they dont want to lose on their desktop just because its so much easier to remember where it is. eventually it WILL get cluttered, but its a good temp solution until they're more at ease with the hard drive, and finding their way through it. I can just imagine how lost some people would feel without their desktop and most used files staring back at them when they turn on their computers.
I can accept that there are some people who feel the desktop and hard drive icon metaphor are out dated, but i fail to see how their preference should override other peoples prefs.. instead of "killing" something you don't aggree with, how about encouraging an implamentation to have it or not, depending on your settings?
i dunno, to me its like saying "oh i can ride a bike now, so training wheels should be abolished, they only get in the way now".
its short sighted and biased, and only makes things harder for those who are just starting out.
Think of it : directories could be bookshelves, and generic files books. Music files could be records. You could browse the web looking out of the window. And so on.
You could have different rooms, equivalent of today workspaces: one could organize one room for play, one for office, etc ... You can decorate floor, ceiling and walls as you like, and put in them bookshelves (symlink to directories) or appliances (applications or applets with a look that recalls their function).To make system administration, you go to the basement :-). [Currently missing a clean metaphor for removable media, though].
Application installers could even create their own rooms, in the same way they create folders now.
This environment should be 3d : not the full 3d stuff, since you don't need to loose time walking from one place to another. But enough 3d to look real. And to benefit of spacial arrangement as a way to priopritize symbols : the more important icons are close and big; others are more distant and smaller. A single mouse click could move you in another position, changing the perspective.
When running a today 2d app, you get a full screen 2d view (90% of non technical users I have seen rarely uses more than a window per time). Iconising the window, or clicking on a navig bar button, you are back in your 3d homey environment.
Ciao
----
FB
Once you see it that way you realize immediately that this is very limited. Directory depth is there for a reason. Searching is easier, both for the computer and for human mind, once a certain number of elements is exceeded ( for the human mind that number is about five to eight)
If all the information the user needs can be stored in six to eight directories in a logical way, eliminating death may help useability. For users with more complex needs, this is a very bad idea.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
Do people really use desktops for storing files? I know I see lots of half computer literate users with tons of stuff on the desktop, but anyone that understands computers rarely uses it for more than launching programs and maybe a few very important directories. Many of the linux window managers don't even allow you to store files on the dsktop, in fact, only the ones that tend to be emulating MS Windows do let you put things there. I use WindowMaker and I have never once wished I could place any files on the desktop.
This article is calling for the redesigning of basic filesystem operations because of an overly misused feature that a few GUI systems have. The "everything is a desktop" idea woudl be impossible to implement on anything that relys on non GUI systems. It would also mean that practically every application on earth would have to be redesigned to accomidate this filesystem method.
Rather than change everything to accomidate better understanding of this overly used feature, why not get rid of it? Teach people about the way computers really work with files, rather than keeping them in the dark about whats going on.
Give a NeXT style GUI system a chance, try WindowMaker or Blackbox, or if you are on Windows install Litestep. Give it some time and you will realize how poinless having files on the desktop really is.
The author is against the heirarchical tree structure of directories for organizing content but mistakenly identifies this with the "hard disk icon" (which is, in fact, just a doorway into the heirarchical structure).
In it's place he would do away with the hierarchical directories and replace it with multiple "desktops" (e.g. flat, non-heirarchical, visually-managed workspaces).
The glaring problem with this is that most professional computer users (ie. discounting grandma who sends email three times a month and opened Word once) have so many files/applications on their computers that they would need dozens (or hundreds!) of these desktop workspaces to manage all of the files & applications.
True, some Linux desktop environments have multiple desktops, but check and see how many users have more than six or eight desktops configured. Very few. There's a usablility threshold where if setting up more "categories" (in this case more desktops) actually decreases usability, whereas setting up "sub-categories" within the top-level categories will increase usability. Hence: heirarchy.
The entire field of taxonomy is dedicated to this principle.
As a previous poster said: This article is daft. (And poorly written.)
This kind of research is valuable in that it will help some people get closer to their computers. However, there will never be an 'ultimate' interface, any more than there will be a single way to learn, to love, to create, or to be happy.
No matter how much we condense ourselves down into bell curves and types, we will always be infinitely diverse, and how we interact with each other and our tools will always be a very personal thing.
That being said, I'd like to do some research into teaching people enough science and art to begin with so that whatever interface they come across will quickly become easy for them. This is already the case with most geeks, and I don't accept the idea that we are somehow gifted, or that the so-called average joe must be provided with a toy interface if they ever hope to get anything out of computers.
I wager that as long as we assume users are stupid, they will continue to be.
The traditional desktop is not dead. Period. Why? Because everybody and their relatives use it. Essentially for the same reason we are using qwerty keyboards and not dvorak.
.)
Now, the idea of multiple desktops isn't a bad idea, but it would be nice to find a program that isn't a bloated piece of crap that does it (hydravision from ati comes to mind, but since bundled software always sucks . .
What the authors say is true, you tend to have a bunch of crap on your desktop that you will eventually sort through and put into directories / delete. Pretty much the stuff on there is unusable. Yes, you can have apps and stuff on your desktop, but for the most part, most people organize that into the gnome/kde/apple/start menu (or quicklaunch).
I don't know how many of you have fooled around with litestep (I think it's dead now, I'm not sure) - the skins, by and large are a pain in the ass to use (albeit cool as hell to look at). I suppose things would be different if you made your own "gui overlay", it would make sense. It seems that pretty much any alternative is essentially hierarchically based - i.e. press a button and get a series of options. (click on the foot, apple/? get a list of options) - essentially the "multiple desktop system" is a start menu, albeit with more eye candy.
Anyways . . .
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Great...
Next time some random user needs "more room to store my stuff in the computer" he/she goes out and gets him/herself a larger monitor rather than a larger hard disk !!!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The desktop and window interface as we know it was developed in Xerox Palo Alto laboratories.
Why we still 20-30 yrs later have no good new metaphors is because there is no fundamental development dedicated to that effort.
The machines today come, thanks to ID and other game companies, equipped with graphics chips more than able to create an immersive 3D environment. This capability is totally unused in daily usage.
Trash the disk metaphor like it has been trashed in UNIX file hierarchy: you can still know everything about your disks, but they have become irrelevant in the directory structure.
A good 3D environment should trash the desktops as well and use spaces instead. Yes you can have your 2D windows for text terminals and whatever current applications, but you can as well do your 3D CAD/CGI design/rendering in space provided by a 3D GUI. Imagine being able to "turn around" with mouse or similar (headmounted?) device in order to look around; to be able to "zoom" into and past separate windows and work areas (workspaces) with mouse wheel or cursor keys.
Imagine being able to link to each other related files/items in a 3D-space instead of 2D. What would that do to your DB schemes. Or to zoom into a software package's source icon to see its design, zoom into a class to see its components, and zoom into a method to see its source.
Etc.
This would require trial-and-error, examining, playing around. Where is the team that is being paid for this development?
Any hints would be greatly appreciated. I could even be interested in such work myself.
Consistency is overrated.
That is indeed what should actually be done. Rather than looking at computer UIs in terms of being a metaphor for something else, why can't the computer's interface simply exist?
/. or kuro5hin), we don't drive a car using a metaphor for something else, we simply use the car's controls themselves, having learned.
As an analogy that someone else suggested once (iirc on
The user should not need to understand the notion of a filesystem. "Advanced" users should only need to know that they can plug in a hard drive and know that the OS will automatically format and integrate it into the system. Need more disk space to store MP3s? Simply add a disk, reboot, and have your space automatically split across the second drive.
Users should only have the concept of a Home folder (let's not call it a directory). The user can place all of her data in this folder. Advanced users can create subfolders if they so choose, but the UI should be able to automatically group files in a single folder by type if the user doesn't create one.
Users should not be concerned with OS files, the actual files used to store .EXE and Application files, etc.
Mac OS X is the closest to this. Your home directory contains all your data and application preference files. I recently lost a hard drive, but had a nightly backup of my home directory. I simply reinstalled OS X and the applications I use, and *voila* everything is back to normal -- no importing bookmarks, restoring my e-mail client configuration, etc. Users of KDE/GNOME are enjoying similar benefits.
Windows has a ways to go, but for starters it can get rid of the idiotic "drive letter" concept. At least with UNIX you can mount a separate disk drive into the global filesystem. Windows 2000 provides this equivalent feature finally, but only if you use NTFS. I doubt Windows XP Home encourages end users to use one "C:" drive and mount other disks as a folder, but it should.
Naturally, power users, system administrators, programmers, etc., still would benefit from the concept of a filesystem. But the millions of end-users needn't be bothered with it.
At this time of writing I have a grand total of 4(four) icons on my desktop. Only one of these is a shortcut. I have 12 more shortcuts on my taskbar (so, I use Windows. Sue me. ;o) ). One of the more used icons on my desktop is the one opening the dazzling labyrinth that is my file-system.
I've never really caught on to the desktop-concept. Maybe it's just me.. The desktop is the background for the windows opened by the applications I run. The harddisk on the other hand is the storage for my files (filing-cabinet anyone..?).
The desktop is a metaphor for a physical thing. And a bad one at that. As a lot of UI-design books will tell you one should be very careful when trying to use metaphors. Have a look at Interface Hall of Shame for some examples.
Why do the author of the above article seem to think that multiplying an already bad interface will make it better? And even if the metaphor was a good one I've yet to see office-workers with e.g. a desk per client..
The problem with finding the next great interface is that the fundamentals in a computer-system is not about to change. We will have (and need) a lot of files (information split into little logical parts) for a long time to come. There is no way around this. Abstracting the storage-space and placing the files on seperate desktops instead of having them in folders accessible from anywhere does not change this fact.
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
Obviously not a comment from a Unix system user.
Obviously this is a comment from a Mac user. I don't mean this as a flame. The idea presented basically tries to maximize ease of use to the computer illiterate with no regard for how much it hurts actual functionality. Apple has been tdoing this for years. They hide any real information from the user to make things easier on them. They got rid of the CLI, the next logical step is to remove the filesystem.
Again, I'm not trying to mac bash here, I even suggest macs to people who say all they want to do is browse the web and read e-mail. But the more you really want to use a computer, you realize that the more information you can get your hands on the better. This desktop idea would only serve to let people use the very basic functions of a computer, but it will never let them get any further than that.
What I want is to know what, where and how and then be able to do something about it.
...) inside them. It only makes the confusion magnitudes worse, as it mixes applications, data, physical and logical storage and networking into one incomprehensible mess. There is nothing stable to stick to, no understandable logic to anything. It is only the mess where something resides somewhere doing something to something else while being dependent on yet something else..
It is all too common these days to have strange software, always in state of change and instability, to steal ("embed") other software to show some things ("Documents", "directories", "files", "web pages",
All the computing should return back into the days when the only way to manage computers was simple physical files and directories and independent applications. Even "Joe Luser" could understand that. You have a ".whatever" file, you can "open" it with "whatever" application. That's simple enough. You can see files with "file manager", you can write documents with "Typewriter", you can blowse the remote net with "Browser" throught the connection "network".. For more advanced users that would still leave the power to control everything, have options for "linking and embedding" as necessary and appropriate.
This nut talk about desktops, blurred storage concepts and leased software is pure crap. Sure it might confuse Average Joes enough to pay even more for nothing in the short sight, but it just doesn't work for everything. Not everybody uses the computer for the same purposes in the same way. There really isn't any sense to restricting usage of a general purpose machine with artificial limits (desktops), buggy sw/hw (display adapters, drivers), physical devices (monitor/flat panels) and messed up concepts about data and applications.
Aren't the GUIs there for communicating with users? Isn't the OS there as a base platform to run stuff on? Shouldn't somebody write a "Joe Really Dumb" application to act as a GUI for those confused with logical storage and general computing concepts? They could then limit themselves with that application to two icons and a power button if anything more is too complicated.
Oh well, maybe I missed the point completely, or this confuse-and-conquer is just a business plan for somebody.. Whatever, it sounds like crap anyway.
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The complexities blamed on the desktop metaphor are not the fault of the metaphor itself, but of its implementation in mainstream systems. The default hard disk icon is part of the desktop metaphor. And the icon is the cause of the complexity created by the desktop.
If the desktop metaphor is perfect, yet the "hard drive" icon is part of the metaphor, the how can he claim that the metaphor is perfect and it's the implementation that's wrong?
Ignoring the fact that they contradict themselves in the first paragraph, there's plenty of other glaring holes in the argument.
"The extension of the "rules of the desktop" to cover the entire capacity of the hard disk is the main reason why systems that support multiple desktops seem simpler and are easier to use and manage."
Who says it's simpler? You still need to initially setup that desktop, which involved setting up shortcuts to locations in the file system. Try doing that without delving into the hard drive while still maintaining a super simplistic environment (i.e. no command line either). Besides, maybe I have a lot of data and need 20 desktops to organize it correctly. So instead of setting the default "open" path in the application of my choice, I would have to switch desktops to open a file. What if I want several things of different types open at once?
"It is possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate via the mouse. The feeling of such spiral filing systems is of endless depth, requiring great effort to retrieve a piece of information. It is difficult to create the same spiral feeling on the desktop."
So sub-folders are a bad thing I guess. Yes, it's terribly confusing to have a tree like "documents/company/forms/standard contracts". That would be too confusing to navigate. But if you had someway of setting a "view" on the desktop that would be simpler. And this "view" menu would be incredibly simplistic to use and would be able to differentiate between Forms and Letters in a DOC or PDF file? Gee, that sounds like more work when I create the document too.
"To reap the benefits of the desktop metaphor, we have to design computer systems that leave the user clearly anchored in the desktop metaphor at all times. But in the multiple desktop, you are always on a desktop and can't ever get lost inside the computer."
Ok, but you could get lost in all the desktops you'd need to setup.
The desktop was designed to give users quick access to common programs. You don't need every file you ever need to use, sitting on your desktop, or even some virtual desktop somewhere. Because if you only use it once every six months, you're going to forget what desktop it's on anyways. Intelligent directory trees and default "file-open" locations are the way to do it. The methods outlined in this article would require a lot of extra setup the user would have to do, and doesn't address new files being added by another user on a network.
I guess I was really bored this morning, I didn't intend to comment that much on an opinion piece on some other site. Which makes me wonder, why are we linking to use opinions on other sites? Maybe the author is somebody I know, but isn't this like linking to a slashdot users comments?
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Root of the system? What do you mean?
/etc where your configuration data is stored!"
"This is
Why is it called etc?
/usr - you'll find the actual programs and more there!"
"This is
Why is it called usr? Are there more programs in proc?
"But this is your Home/My Documents/Desktop. There are others similar to yours, but this one is yours."
Why do I have a desktop inside my documents? Sholdn't the documents be on the desktop? And so many of them? This is so complicated.
"However, it doesn't sit on top of the rest of the system!"
What top? What was the root again?
I get what the pundit is saying, but the idea of multiple desktops to do everything is awkward. Calling for that as a matter of usability is to fail to realise the general cluttered state most people leave their desktops.
Yeah, getting rid of the icon is probably a good idea. It is a "box" elsewhere and it's frustrating. Most of the newbies I see go through three stages:
I don't know about you, but having a directory system I can bring up on my "desktop" that lets me jump through is great. It all depends on how you use the system. But face it, as people becoem power users, the directory structure will come back again and again. Most people can't wait for tech support and thus will always migrate away from the dummy device.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Funny, I always thought it was complementary to the desktop metaphor.
If you're looking for ease of use for a limited set of functions, by all means put icons on the desktop, or group then into function-related folders on the desktop, or whatever. Have more than one desktop each with its own set of icons or folders for mutually exclusive functions? By all means. But do provide a reasonable way for system managers to easily organise the functions in a way that makes sense from the user's point of view. To some extent, this is already done when you (as end-user and system manager of your own personal Wintel box) install an intelligently-packaged new application and are asked whether you want an icon for it on the desktop, and where you want it to be integrated into the taskbar mechanism. Of course, some application vendors believe that their customers shouldn't have these choices, but that's another matter.
But once you get beyond a certain number of functions, and a certain level of complexity, then direct access to the underlying hierarchical file system has a lot to recommend it.
Just my 0.02 Euros
um, ok so we no longer view the data-space on the HDD as a unit to be dealt with - and we only focus on the File-space/system so as to make it less confusing....
Some poster mentioned taht this article was refering to something along the lines of logical volumes... but what about redundancy and fault tolerance.
regardless of what this article is suggesting (however confusing in and of itself) there will *ALWAYS* need to be the people who do look at the disk as a disk - and need to know where the shit is stored. The admins and architects of such systems.
also - what does this mean:
"Move the mouse beyond the boundaries of a directory"??? huh? am I missing something?
and this:
"But in the multiple desktop, you are always on a desktop and can't ever get lost inside the computer. " - um - but wouldnt the newbie user get lost amongst the multiple desktops? If this guy thinks that any newbie or even just a moderate user will be able to feel really comfortable in a CLI having to navigate some nebulous filesystem spread on who knows what HDDs... I think he is mistaken.
"The use of "stacked desktops" as the overriding method of organizing " - ok so what he is saying here is that he doesnt want a bottom level "desktop" - and doesnt want some sort of "start" menu system - of file manager to navigate through and find the files/apps that he needs - he would rather have almost everything open in a window and just have to navigate through the many many things that are open...
So I picture his desk at work just being covered in single 8x11 peices of paper and he is constantly shuffling through them - but thinks it all organized...
.
I don't know what the original UI designers at Xerox had in their mind for the desktop, but today's use is simple:
The desktop stores links to other resources.
This applies to applications and to directories. The author of the original article is fundamentally wrong to say that the desktop contains the hard disk. Instead, it just contains a link to the directories "c:\" or "/home/$USER" or whatever.
This makes perfect sense if you want quick access to your folders, exactly as most people want quick access to their favorite applications.
However, he's right that the desktop has its limitations. It's especially stupid if you have to minimize all your windows just for the 5 second job of locating an icon and clicking on it. The taskbar of Windows 98 and the extended start menu of Windows XP do it much better...
That is not so far from how I use my 8 KDE desktops, one is always for mail, one for the web, one for VmWare (some customers still insist to pay me for coding Windows stuff), one for real programming (3 consoles: editor, compile, and misc/man/another edit/...) carefully laid out to fill the screen...
The only problem is that with such a system the users would leave zillions of applications running everywhere. But that's why we keep getting faster computers...
In Murphy We Turst
Directories may not make sense to some. That's why Apple and others called them folders, as in a manila folder. You take a document off your desktop and file it away in a folder. Simple.
Remember, the original Macs used floppy disks. You frequently had more than one inserted. They looked the same on screen as they did on your other desktop. You put stuff you didn't want anymore in the trash can. Very simple for office workers to learn.
Getting back to the article, of course the desktop took up the whole screen. What do you want around it, the floor?! Walls?
How does one get rid of the disk icon? I have two main internal hard drives (20GB and 30GB). How else do I tell them apart? What if I insert a zip or a CD? How do I tell them apart? Or an external FireWire or USB drive? This doesn't sound very well thought out! You *could* integrate permanent drives into one structure using mount points but how is that easier for the new comer? "Oh your second disk is mounted so that it is part of your first disk". "What?"
Having said all this, I don't have a desktop. I use MacOSX. The only thing below the windows is a desktop picture. My hard drives are in the computer window. So, in a sense, Apple has partly phased out the desktop metaphor. It still has folders, but you can choose not to display a desktop. The new representation is a Computer with icons representing all your storage devices (similar to My Computer in Windows). This is closer to what the new, computer literate generation, mine, interprets it to be.
In short, we don't need a metaphor anymore. You only need a metaphor when explaining to new people. Using the office as an analogy made sense when computers were new. How is an office analogy going to help a young child learn about computers?
I'd like to see us go to a database-like idea with the ability to attach arbitrary attributes to files and replace folders with categories. A file could belong to more than one category. Related categories could have links between them. Instead of a tree you'd get more of a web. Don't know if it'd be any simpler though. For the time being the current idea works.
if the mouse is incapable of filling your needs, you should consider alternatives
... Of course, if we "simplify" we reduce the efficiency and power of it for those that have mastered it.
Exactly. Everything you ever needed to know you did not learn in kindergarten, but for some reason some people don't beleive that. Sometimes, as is the case with general purpose computers, the interface will require some training because there are new concepts.
An apt analogy is language. There are too many words in English. We should simplify it. Perhaps we only need 500 words.
Teach people about disks, don't take the icon away.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Wrong. It's actual, real, hard GPL, and that's the reason it never got big... RMS even cites it in the famous anti-LGPL rant of his.
I should be able to use a computer without knowing the details of inodes, free space bitmaps, disk partitioning, and the I/O channel configuration of the computer. It is the operating system's job to manage that stuff and hide it from the user. The user interface should present a suitable abstraction or abstractions that is not dependent on the implementation details of the computer's storage system.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think a lot of people are missing the fact that the desktop does not represent a hard disk or a folder; it represents the _whole_ computer.
The problems arise when operating systems adopting the desktop have to support parallel legacy concepts, such as Windows with it's multiple X:\ roots or Mac OS X with the Unix directory tree.
The cleanest desktop implementation has always been the old MacOS (=9), where the desktop is consistently presented as the root of everything. Through it you can access hard disks and other storage quite naturally, and you never get lost.
Fast forward to 2001 and you have an underlying OS with sophisticated name spaces, networking, hypertext, and access to gigabytes of data. Icons representing devices and a handful of files don't cut it anymore, if they ever did.
This is, of course, also why trying to adopt the Apple GUI to UNIX machines has failed so miserably in the past. It wasn't that the Apple GUI was so super-sophisticated that nobody could copy it. Rather, UNIX has always been too complex for the Apple GUI to represent well.
So, where does that leave us? Windows, Gnome, and KDE are slavishly trying to copy the original Apple paradigm, putting file icons and link icons everywhere, leading to a complex mess. Yes, this needs to go. Trouble is, while there are a bunch of better ideas, the one thing that users hate more than a bad UI is a UI that's different from what they are used to. So, all the good ideas that are out there (and have been out there for a couple of decades) have a really hard time in the market. It's not better ideas that's needed, what's needed is better ideas that are also palatable to existing users. And that, nobody has come up with yet.
So, it is possible that you might forget once in a while, where you put something? Big deal, same thing happens in the real world. There I have, next to my desktop, a closet. And a floor. And a briefcase. And a toolbox. And more. And that tiny jumper I need to put my harddisk in slave-mode might be in a box, or in a small plastic bag, or on the floor. And that bag might be in another bag, or in a box, or under a pile of papers. And that container might be in the toolbox, or on the floor, or on the desktop. Come to think of it, didn't I throw away that jumper a couple of weeks ago?
:-)
A mouse (or cat) might traverse the mess around my real-life desktop, but it certainly is a labyrinth... Now, where did I put that harddisk?
karma capped
Most posts I have just read are pretty critical of this guys suggestion. I have to agree with them. I dont see a great problem with the "filing cabinet/russian doll hybrid" paradigm of the filesystem. It seems pretty logical and inutuitive to me.
However, I think I should have a go at arguing for this guys idea, as nobody else is!
On my computer, I use multiple desktops. I have one for work stuff - star office, kpresenter etc. I have another desktop for multimedia - xmms, mplayer, realplayer etc, a 3rd desktop for gaming, and a 4th (spare!) desktop. Yes, I am a bit wierd and anal (see yesterdays discussion about autism!). Furthermore, I usually organise my linux consoles in a similar way - tty1-2 for root access, the rest for userland stuff, another one for tailing logs and a vt100 open at the end (comes in usefull on occasion).
I find this logical division of "desktops" enables me to better organise myself. I dont see why MS Windows couldnt enable this for Harry Homeowner. Somewhere on the taskbar is a shortcut for desktops. It is trivial to change/add/remove desktops. When you install a game, it is "installed" to the game desktop. There is a shortcut on the desktop/start bar for that desktop. The working directory for that game is on the desktop. For many users, who just need Office, Explorer, winamp and a few games this might work.
However, I can think of a number of problems that would need to be overcome. What about generic applications, which you may need on a number of desktops? What about applications which dont fit into any desktop category? What happens when the desktop starts getting to cluttered? What happens if you want to open Word and that RPG on the same desktop (i.e. so you could copy and paste the final text into word, to prove you had completed the game to an equally sad friend)? I'm sure most of these problems are trivial to overcome, but you will surely encounter further difficulties.
Finally, I dont think you can ever get rid of the Hard Drive icon. Yeah, just hide it away, so Harry doesnt get confused by it. But it still needs to be there for power users.
MSWindows have added some interestings changes, like a "real" top level desktop, a taskbar, a quicklanch bar, a start menu, a trash... And now that I'm using Debian with Ice, I choose to reuse some os these ideas, suppress some, to obtain MY perfect desktop.
And it's the same for the user community: God created the taskbar, everybody used it, some linux GUI used it too, so God saw that it was good.
It's a kind of natural evolution...
Actually the standard for VMS file names is this: devicename:[dir.subdir1.subdir2] So your home directory might be: DBA1:[USERS.YOU].
You could play games with logical names so that you, as a user, did not have to know about actual devices, but I thought this was pretty akward.
The Unix file system is a lot easier to deal with.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
The article is simply nostalgia wrapped in a thesis. I think the argument for killing the hard drive icon is very valid, but the rest of the paper devolves into the meanderings about desktops.
Multiple desktops are simply windows. Call them whatever you want, but the authors want a windowing motif without a base window to throw junk onto.
The other problem is the incredible naivetee of this statement from the article: Add unlimited files without fear of clutter. (You can change views in a directory.) The first time you used a Disk Operating System, you had a tendancy to throw all of your files into one directory. That's my definition of clutter, and it is no different than the desktop paradigm where junk files reside.
I think the authors are forgetting history and the reasons why we don't use bare-bones DOS to operate our applications. They're also forgetting that with a computer monitor, if you remove all of your desktops, what's left? there has to be some basic background, even if it has no functionality.
Short and sweet: That was one of the single most stupid articles I have ever read in the computer field. His ideas (which he fails to argue very well or logically) might help an *extreme* novice use a computer more easily, but would (as a design feature) prevent them from ever understanding the system. And anyone who was even a modest "power user" would feel completely strangled by the restrictive interface.
_sig_ is away
They never present real world experiences that collaborate their claims that the desktop metaphor, as is, is "dead". As the author said himself, Apple was going to use a NeXT like filebrowser, but decided against it with a "chorus of protest from the users". Users are *not*, for the most part having difficulty with the current paradigm, it works well. Experts spend all the time complaining that the users have it too hard, and users are simply wishing that companies leave well enough alone.
His proposal of imposing artificial, view based limits on the organazation of files is ludicrous. He spends his time complaining that while their is a screen with a Desktop, it's not consistant with directory structure, not like we have it in real life. Last time I checked, people working on stuff on their desks pull them out of a file cabinet and put them back when finished, more like the computer paradigm. It makes sense to store your information differently from the way we work on a desktop. A strategy like he suggests would impose a huge penalty in terms of time to organize and retrieve data that is not currently on the Desktop, and greatly limits the amount of data that can be in one space, even if the relationships demand that they *should* be together, regardless of "icon clutter".
All these self-proclaimed experts need to be hit a few times with a clue stick. Users like the paradigm the way it is, it is not too complicated.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
In the next generation of file managers the hard disk icon concept should go away.
Whether I am in KDE or Ximian Gnome, I always make my home dir my desktop. The place where I keep file IS my desktop and the problems with these concepts are thrown away. This is not a big issue.
Under Nautilus with my home dir designated as my desktop, I can right click and mount volumes that are not essentially part of my essential OS environment (removable media for example) keeping these things seperate makes sense.
One of the filesystem concepts I loved when I first got into the *Nixes was the idea that everything extends from root. If I have an NFS mounted file system from a system two buildings away it appeared to the end user as just another directory in their tree (No C:\ drives and D:\ drives etc...).
The man makes good points and these points are being addressed by people like the folks working on KDE and Gnome that give you the flexibility of NOT creating some extra space called the desktop that does not correspond with the rest of your file structure.
The idea of your home directory as your desktop (as the place where you keep your files) is one that works suprisingly well in a visual GUI format.
My wife with no big *Nix experience loves the idea because she does not have to go hunting for files she dragged to the desktop to organize them in her folders off the home dir or she can pick them right up off her desktop if she needs them.
This is an idea that is good for experienced and novice users.
ACK
This is interesting - Steve Jobs tried to kill the desktop metaphore and the HD icons with Mac OS X - anyone who used the Public Beta can tell u that it was quite a surprise to see that the HD icon DIDN'T appear on the "Desktop" and that the "Desktop" wasn't even called the "Desktop" anymore, but simply the "Finder."
In the current release of Mac OS X, Apple has sort of stepped backwards by putting the HD icons back on the "Desktop," mostly in response to a terrible uproar from the Mac faithful who couldn't imagine using their Macs WITHOUT that metaphor - let's be honest, Apple's implementation made a lot more sense than anyone else's, simply because with the classic Mac OS, you didn't even necessarily need to stick to their folder structure for your machine to work. You could bury your system folder 30 levels deep and still boot your machine.
But also worth noting is the fact that in the current Mac OS X, the user is given the option of whether or not to use HD icons on the desktop, and NOTHING is placed on the "desktop" by default. Its essentially a blank canvas when you boot into it, and it lets the user decide whether or not to use the metaphor.
Personally, I choose NOT to display my internal HDs on the desktop, instead I place a link to my data storing partition on the desktop, essentially hiding the rest of my HDs, which contain mainly just my Systems and Apps, and I also have the option to have REMOVABLE media appear on the desktop. This is another area where the Mac OS shines - you don't have a floppy icon or Zip icon or Jaz icon or whatever until you actually insert a disk into the computer. Having them appear on the desktop is instant visual feedback that YES, there IS a removable disk in the drive and it offers quick access to it.
So if you want to see an implementation of this scenario in action, get a sweet deal on a used beige or B&W G3, max out the RAM, and toss a copy of X onto it.
You'll LOVE it.
like everyone else who tried reading the article, i was struck by how disjointed it was.
at first you arent sure what metaphor he is whinging about, but then you realize that he does have a point.
we need a new metaphor. its true. we do. and its not really us who need new metaphors, its the typical user community. the ones who we usually bitch about - the AOL users of the world. and since we're all such ass-kick programmers (l33t c0d3 h4>but what i would really really like is to have the desktop not be a file metaphor, but a notes metaphor - in other words, kill the desktop and make it a cube wall metaphor. one where i can stick up notes and reminders and post its. where i can "hang" my clock, my calendar, or maybe where i can hang a shelf to put books and manuals at.
I've always found the "Desktop" concept somewhat difficult. it doesnt feel like a dsektop, its standing up in front of me. why would i be looking down at it? (i know, i know, pre computers we used to write by looking down at the desktop, but i always focused on what i was doing, not on the things strewn about the 5 foot wide space...)
actually, one metaphor that i did like was the old Magic Cap os from General Magic it used a Desktop metaphor and also a Hallway metaphor. these actually work when you realize that people shouldnt have to think to use the computer, they should just be able to use it.
Make computers easier to use, and we'll have more people using computers and doing more with them. To me, thats what makes a GUI good. Thats why i think people liked the mac originally. you didnt have to learn how to use it, it was all presented for you in a graphical and friendly manner - as opposed to a command line.
The GUI has to evolve again. lets go for something even easier to use.
Seriously though, there is a bit of truth here. People can find things easiest when they are in a place that makes sense. Your food is in the kitchen (food preparation area), grooming supplies in the bathroom (personal preparation area), clothes in the bedroom (where you usually take them off and put them on), etc. Everything is organized by its function, and anything that doesn't fit in a certain place just goes wherever you feel like putting it at the time. The beauty of this kind of a system on a computer is that you build it yourself so it will work best for you, and it can be done with any common interface.
The hard drive only has "vague space" if you let it. Let's say I'm looking for the pictures from my trip to NH in August. At the top level of my hard drive are two folders of digital pictures - one with the originals and one with modified versions. I go into the folder of originals and find a folder marked 200108-NH, which contains the pictures I was looking for. Wow, that was tough. Finding other things, like a PDF of the ruling in one of the Napster cases, would be similarly easy. In this case, it would be something like Files->Other (anything not covered by one of the other choices)-> Court Cases->Napster (this doesn't actually exist, because at the moment stuff like that is in a generic location for stuff that hasn't been sorted yet, kind of like my living room...). The problem with a system like this is that it is up to the users to organize their data themselves, but you can't really get around that part. Other paradigms and metaphors still require setup by the user, and usually this setup is more than dumping files into folders - you really can't get much simpler than dumping stuff into a container. Ok, so maybe we should go to a refrigerator metaphor then...
The desktop metaphor isn't dead. Anyone who tells you this should be taken out back and shot, to put it bluntly. What IS dead, however, are non-ergonomic, clumsy, single-workspace, non-intuitive desktops that disallow fast expression of a user's wishes. Like Windows. Like the OSX. Like Gnome. Like KDE.
This article would have been better suited to bashing "unnatural storage heirarchies" that the typical Joe User puts up with on a daily basis, instead of trying to drive another nail into the Desktop coffin. The reality of it is, it never began this way. Heirarchical storage management never hit the mainstream until the early 90's, despite having been around for at least 20 years by that point (re: Doug Englebart, his NLS "here's a mouse" demo in SF '68..it discusses other ideas besides using a mouse, like heirarchical storage)
Most systems prior to Windows, including Desqview, GEOS, and even the lowly Atari ST's GEM desktop were non-heirarchical. They were also far easier to use for people who didn't want to have a degree in computer science in order to use their computers effectively. It was only in the mid 80's that "heirarchical storage"-based desktops began to appear on mainstream computers ala AmigaDOS, MacOS, etc.
Anyway, enough history. I propose a solution. There needs to be a new GUI project started which is willing to accept, employ, and demonstrate new, unorthodox ideas. Lets just see what works. Lets try new ideas and see if people like them. If it floats, it stays. If it sinks it sucks--Simple as that. You cant call the desktop metaphor dead until you *try* to you've exhausted every thread of discovery, and tried everything there is to try, and thats clearly not whats happening these days. Gnome and KDE, are in their own niches now, neither project is willing to change horses in midstream and overhaul the appearance and function of their respective systems. There needs to be a third entity. I tried, back in '97 with InSight. Some of the ideas we developed during numerous late night brainstorming sessions were good enough to get published, and utimately earn a citation from ACM. Its not that hard, guys. You just have to recognize what you use because you're stuck with it, and what you use because it makes sense. Document-centric desktops, for example. Do you really need a document-centric desktop? Wouldn't it be more condusive to have a xanalogically oriented [keio.ac.jp] desktop? Why is the web 1-dimensional? Wouldn't it be better if HTML was a parallel data structure you could use to "drill down" to the original source of the information you're reading instead of wandering down a one-way street? Why do you use scrollbars? Do you use them because they're the only thing you know about? Do you recognize how clumsy they are, how counter-intuitive they are to use, and how much real-estate they waste? Can you think of how to implement scrolling in a different, better way?
Well, I have. Infact, i've been working with a guy named Johnathan Walther (and have been for the past month and a half) on designing a demo for such a device. Thats right, we have something we feel will finally deliver a death blow to scrollbars. We already have a working model, which is undergoing the final stages of fine-tuning prior to release. Prior to releasing the demo, we'll be co-authoring a whitepaper for publication on how to build it, and how to implement it anywhere you like. The code will be meticulously documented, and we're going to throw it at anyone willing to see it. Hopefully,
So, what are you doing to make things better?
Bowie J. Poag
What we need is a computer with a single user file, on a single desktop, manipulated with a mouse that has a single button! What will it do? I'm not sure, but I imagine it would look a lot like a TV set.
Except that TV remotes have an increasing number of buttons, allowing one to do many functions well.
TVs that require a difficult-to-navigate menu for every function, instead of having buttons for them, piss people off.
The best TVs, of course, have buttons for many common functions, and menus for uncommon functions. Kind of like, say, a modern desktop, with a hard drive icon handy.
The Desktop, as such, makes perfect sense. At least in the OS9 concept, it was meant to be a space higher than even the drives on the system, from which you could start your search on any of the drives. This was great. No meaningless drive letters like in DOS, and no confusion of one drive not being in the same place as all the others (in Linux, this would be / for the boot drive, and /mnt for the other drives).
OSX abandons this. I wouldn't mind that, but they need to do a better job of hiding it, at least in the GUI (and to be honest, it would be better in the CLI as well). I have my own thoughts as to how that might be doable, but I suppose that's for another post. It can certainly be done without breaking POSIX-correctness; it's really just a minor tweak to how the filesystem layout would be shown. But that's for another time, really; I'm trying to make mock-ups of how it could work, and I couldn't put those here anyway.
Since *I* don't have any problem with a complex machine, *EVERYBODY* else should find it easy as well. If they don't, they're just Lusers who need to get a life. Basically, they suck. I'm superior to them.
See, when I was in high school, I got teased and beat up a lot, and now that I'm in control of the machines that those lusers have to use everyday, I work *hard* to make them complex and unusable for their work (so I can make fun of how stupid they are and get back at them for those terrible years in high school), while I make it good for me and the things that I do.
This is classic nerd thinking. Alan Cooper wrote a whole book about how letting computer nerds design computer programs is wrong and stupid. The parent comment lends a lot of weight to his argument.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
So people have to learn how to use computers in the same way they have to learn how to drive a car.
Have you ever thought about how intuitive an automobile is?
So you see, we can't demand an "intuitive" interface for everything. There are some things in life that people should just be expected to learn how to do, like operate cars and computers (regardless of the computer's OS). That also requires learning traffic laws, and similar "laws of the net."
If we had a Fisher-Price any-idiot-can-drive interface in cars, imagine how dangerous the roads would be! Even more so than they already are, considering that most idiots already know how to drive today, despite the "complex" interface in automobiles (even with automatic transmissions!) Yet they can't copy files around on their own computer.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
It is possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate via the mouse. The feeling of such spiral filing systems is of endless depth, requiring great effort to retrieve a piece of information.
Here we go again, the "too many clicks" theory of useability. Which might have some validity, if it's proponents would support the notion with scenarios that actually made sense.
Shallow directory trees are a terrible way for humans to navigate large amounts of information. This theory ignores the effort involved in scanning the correspondingly huge numbers of entries in each directory to find what you want. The American Scientist has a relevant article which relates to this very subject, which was previously discussed on Slashdot. Look for the bit about telephone menu systems, right after figure 2.
This is not to say that filesystem hiearchies should be strictly ternary, just that the reasoning these so called "useability experts" use to come to their conclusions is suspect, at best.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Everything old is new again!
Who would have thought that the greatest user-interface innovation of the 21st century might have come from Microsoft's first crack at an operating system, 20 years prior?
Yup, that's right. In MS DOS 1.0, there was no hierarchical file system. For users of that fine system, it was not "possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate." Things were simple. Life was good.
And then, along came the 10 MB hard disk support. Some clever person realized that if you attempt to store 10 MB worth of files in a flat structure, you'll very quickly lose track of what is there.
And now, 20 years later, a standard PC's storage is typically on the order of 50 GB. And we're supposed to make our lives easier by returning to flat file systems? I'm supposed to put an icon representing each of my files on one desktop, or even several desktops, and be able to (a) fit them all in that visual space and (b) ever find anything at all?
Right.
Ok, here's what is supposed to convince you that desktops are the way to go:
The desktop fills the screen and the mouse cannot get past it.
vs.
With directories you can move the mouse past the boundaries of a directory.
And why exactly should I want to feel boxed in by my GUI elements?
There's a limited feeling of space in the desktop. You can only add items to it that hide things (folders, etc.).
vs.
With directories you can add unlimited files without fear of clutter. (You can change views in a directory.)
It sounds like these "directories" are far more versatile and useful than "desktops" so far...
The desktop cannot be moved or deleted. It is the anchor for the information placed on the hard disk.
vs.
With directories you can add, delete, and "move" directories "anywhere" inside the hard disk.
Great, I can do what I want with them. Well, I'm sold, directories are the way to go. Oh, right, the article was arguing for desktops...
Ideally, your machine should be a collection of desktops that you have created and named, that are easy to track via a menu or toggle button,
Yes, these "desktops" could be organized in a tree so that you can have desktops within desktops, allowing you see a broader or more specific view. You could "toggle" between them by, say, clicking on a representative icon twice in rapid succession, or through other means defined by the rules of the interface. By giving these "desktops" descriptive names and grouping them in some logical fashion, you could effectively "file" them away in something like a filing cabinet...
In other words, this article was complete and utter nonsense. Of course, you probably already knew that.
"This is
"This is
Huh? Is this what you consider to be intuitive? Or is this just what your preconceived prejudices tell you about what is intuitive? Why should you expect configuration data to be in a folder whose name is is an abbreviation for a word that means "and other stuff"? Why should actual programs be stored in a folder whose name is an abbreviation for "user"? I would expect that folder to contain data belonging to users. If you're going to propose breaking free of an irrational-but-familiar paradigm, don't propose replacing it with another irrational-but-familiar paradigm.
Many comments here seem to defend computer complexity. They are, after all, complex machines with powerful uses, it's really quite natural that they require an amount of expertise to use.
This is very common argument from experts in a given field. "This is our field, only authorized personel allowed, move along if don't want to play by our rules." I have always found it to be distasteful.
Techs or even information technology people of all variations aren't only ones guilty of this. Lawyers are infamous for this, like are doctors.
What would you think if a lawyer were to say something to effect that law doesn't have to be accessible to common man, but rather it should be as usable (=exact, readable) as possible to an expert. (Writing and reading law text is actually pretty similar practize to coding nowadays. Both have their conventions and rules that are purposeful, at least if accessibility is not considered a goal.)
I think many that have defended computer complexity would be ouraged by a law they can't understand.
(The next comment isn't about this particular blindspot, but rather a more general observation and flamebait based on my own work-experiences.) I sometimes wonder if the lack of respect that tech show towards normal users has an negative impacts on the finacial bottomline of their employers and if that would be enough reason to fire someone.
-- Flam, a tech if anyone was wondering
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
Okay, harddrive bad. Desktop good, but not good enough. We need to make the desktop larger, multiple desktops... more surfaces to put things on. Tables, desks, little shelves.
I've got it! A study! You've got books over here for your reference material, your desktop with pen and ink for writing a new document, a window (glass-window) for viewing the rest of the world with a webbrowser, a light switch for shutting down the system, a utility closet for the control panel items... add a little mousehole with a rat that offers some helpful advice...
Aw poop. This looks exactly like Microsoft Bob. Well, let's start small.
The desktop metaphor might not be ideal, but I don't see them coming up with a better solution. Anyone can come up with a few reasons why it is bad, but coming up with a better alternative is the challenge.
The desktop is a great way to introduce the non-technical to a computer. Sure, it's not perfect, but these guys are nit-picking...
--ST
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
In a couple of years, nobody will remember what a 3.5" diskette was, 'cept us oldtimers who remember what 5.25" and tapes were.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The vague space of the hard disk should not exist for you. Ideally, your machine should be a collection of desktops that you have created and named, that are easy to track via a menu or toggle button, and are each understandable because they follow the same rules and offer the same limitations.
The hard disk icon was an error that should disappear from mainstream computer systems. Multiple desktops should be implemented across the board to simplify the life of casual users everywhere.
What? I don't think this person has ever done anything useful with a computer. I have so much I want to say to rip this apart but I just can't organize it all in my head. I'll just say a few quick things:
He's right about one thing: Most OS's don't implement the desktop idea correctly. What he's wrong about is his idea of a desktop. The whole concept, started by Mac OS, was that you have a desk, and the desk has drawers. You go into the folders within the drawers (directories within the hard drives) to get the files you want to use, and then you take them out and they are on your desktop. Macintosh still is the best at this. Their entire OS is extremely easy to grasp, even in OSX, only now it's much more powerful to the advanced user. Windows is just a cheap immitation. Linux is... well it's great, but it's desktop idea was meant for functionality and power, not casual use (at least in early distros.)
Now we come to the suggested desktop idea. This is ridiculous. Having multiple desktops that you toggle to, having no directory structure at all? Do you all realize how ridiculously point and click that would be? No longer could you go in a directory tree browsing program and efficiently move things, you would have to slect them with the mouse on one desktop, do the copy command, tab over to the desktop you want, then do the paste command. That's right, no more "cp" for you linux people, it's all point and click... That's just not going to fly. It's not powerful enough. The other thing is, think about this metaphorically. Multiple layered desktops... what in the hell can you compare that to? Having like 10 desks in a circle and you spin around to see which one you'll use? Stacking 10 desks on top of each other? I just don't see how that's easier.
Granted, I like the multiple desktops in Linux. I use them to have multiple full screen applications running at the same time. They have many other uses. On the other hand, I use the file tree browser, or the command line, to do all of my file management. It simply is the most convenient and powerful way, and if a user can't learn to browse a file tree... well... they need to pick up a new hobby/occupation.
~ now you know
"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler."
The problem is that with dynamic disk spanning, it fills the space sequentially: if you span a 20, a 40, and a 20 gb drive, winders fills the first 20 gb, then the 40 gb, before it starts on the final 20. Useful in some aspects I suppose, but I suppose the focus is on seamless extension, not speed or reliability (then again, if you want those, get a hardware RAID).
funny munging
[note to author of parent: It's an interesting idea, and I'm now going to proceed to make fun of it. Hope you don't mind.]
"Okay, we're booting up. As you can see, a door is slowly opening. Above it, it is labeled 'My Computer Place.' As you step in, you see a room full of filing cabinets, CD organizers, a sofa and loveseat in front of a TV, a washer/dryer set, and a small calico cat."
"Try clicking on the cat. Heh heh. It meowed. Heh heh, it meowed again. Oops, it exploded. The guys in Redmond have been playing too much Warcraft."
"Notice that you can see both a trashcan and a fireplace. Click and drag a file from the filing cabinet to the trashcan. Now click an drag it back. You've recovered the file, although it has a couple of spots of bacon grease on it now. Pretty cool, eh? Now click and drag that same file to the fireplace. Now try and drag it back. See? You can't! Oh, that wasn't something you were working on, was it? Fifty hours of work, you say? Well, then you're not likely to ever forget the difference between the two."
"Now let's take a look at that washer/dryer set. This is where your 'virtual persona' does his laundry. Your virtual persona is much like you, as he can go around the house making changes. He's working hard, watching your behavior in order to learn your preferences. See what he's learned already? He's dragging all your files over to the fireplace. Your VP looks like Bill Gates by default, but you can change that."
"You also have a virtual pet. Er, had, anyways. Don't worry, they're a pain to take care of, and you're probably better off without it."
"Now let's take a tour of the basement, shall we? The room over to your left full of boxes is where we store seldom-used files. If you want to access the contents of this room, just tell your VP to drag the boxes up to the living room and sort through them. The process takes about three hours, and elicits a torrent of verbal abuse from your VP."
"Over there you see the water heater. By examining this, you can see the status of. . . er, well, your water-cooled heat sink. If you have one. Otherwise, just ignore it."
"Finally, behind this door, you have a server farm which controls your access to the outside world. You can sit down, and, by pressing virtual 'keys,' you can issue ipchain commands for your firewall, ping other computers, and boot up virtual mail and web servers. I think the mail server is running an older version of Linux, so you may need to upgrade it to the latest kernel."
"Now, back upstairs. This is the door to your computer room. Under no circumstances should it ever be opened by anyone. It has to do with Godel's incompleteness theorem. If you open the door, the computer will try to model itself, including the fact that there is a virtual computer inside the model which it needs to model, and so on to infinity. Trust me, the RAM upgrade alone would bankrupt a small country."
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
C'mon! I read the article and I still have no idea why I should care. I don't even use my desktop (WinNT). I have the bare minimum 3 icons plus Apache. I do everything through Explorer or keybindings to whatever app I need.
And I've used the same org scheme for my files and directories for like 7 years now. I have no problem finding things, even if I occasionally have to go more than 2 layers below Progra~1.
GTRacer
- Now if I could just organise my bills...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
I wish people would stop trying to reinvent the wheel so much when your dealing with computers. There are no specific folks that are at fault as they all seek to create the latest, greatest, most intuitive interface that yet looks the same as everything else. That is all about marketing. The main reasons GUI's suck sometimes is, to me, they were never meant to be a be all end all kind of thing. GUI's are great at some things (graphics editing, web surfing, even typing a letter ) and bad at other things (copying files, backing up files). I think the hardest thing for people to realize about GUI's is that they are dynamic. They can put that Window anywhere they want on the desktop. There's no standard place for it to come up unless you set them up that way or they are programmed that way. GUI's mean icons (even standard window widgets) can change and make documentation difficult. With CLI's, you can give a simple list of instructions that work everytime. With GUI's, it's difficult.
:)
:)
It's also more difficult to do some things with a GUI. Take copying files. In Linux the CLI command is:
cp (target path and file name) (destination path and filename)
That's it. The only reason it won't work is if you don't have permissions on either the target file or the destination directory. To copy a file on a KDE desktop.
1. Open konquerer file manager.
2. Navigate to directory in left pane.
3. Drag file to destination.
See! You have at LEAST 2 more steps depending on what your condition is when you start. When a CLI is loaded, it's loaded and it's prompt is always ready for input being the input opening a file or copying it. No opening a file manager....I thought the file manager was you and not the program, but I guess I was wrong!
Linux, to me is the best fusion of both. You can not only use the bash commands but you can launch GUI apps from a BASH prompt, but then, you know this. Linux needs learning that Windows doesn't. I have a neighbor who would not know a dos command if it hit him in the face. I feel it helps to know at least one CLI before going completely GUI because it does help you see what the Filemanger REALLY does. People need to stop trying to abstract the computer and just accept it and learn it. Did you know how to use a hammer at first? No. The only intuitive interface on the planet is the nipple because hey it just begs to be sucked on!
Gorkman
For the average user (and even for the power user!), they typically don't want to deal with the organization of data in order to satisfy the parameters imposed by the computer.
We need a new UI paradigm; remove the need for a user to create directories, name files, type URLs.
The popular PC has been around for 20-some years. Remember the problems people had with keeping floppies organized? That problem still exists...except now they have to *really understand* the inner-workings of computers in order to move files between machines.
The computer is a tool with LOTS of power. Instead of making it so that users have to know more about the computer, we need the next generation machines to know more about us. We shouldn't need a manual, the computer should be asking us for help so it can serve us better.
A car stereo has at least a dozen buttons on it, with easily half of them having multiple functions. How about those 4-function knobs on it?
My car (well, truck), has about the same number of controls on it as yours has (that I can think of), but you didn't count the stereo controls. For a fairly nice stereo, you'll easily have 20 or more controls there.
OS/2 had folders that the user could use to organize his desktop a bit, but I have never seen such a thing on a Windows user's desktop. Windows may be capable of that, but if it is, it's not a well advertised feature. Of course, OS/2 folders were just directories that lived in your desktop directory and pointed elsewhere on your hard drive, but most users didn't know or care about that. And God help you if your desktop ever got corrupted, which happened far too often in OS/2.
I use gnome and keep about 10 or so icons in the mini-icon holder on my panel. The icon that gets the most use by far is the Eterm icon. I'm more likely than not to launch a graphical app from the command line. I also make good use of the deskguide applet to change desktops. I can multi-task much more efficiently without extraneous clutter distracting me, so if I need to start up a new and non-trivial task, I switch to a new desktop.
A more appriate thesus for this article is "The Desktop is Dead for Me." The author has obviously outgrown a simple desktop and needs a better organizational solution. Maybe one day he'll grow into a command line user.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The GUI did not start at Apple, nor is Apple the only company to improve on Xerox Parc. I have always found Windows easier to use, for the same reason incidentaly that UNIX users prefer a command line, I find that the nanny O/S gets in the way more often than it helps. The difference between the Apple and Windows is the difference between AOL and the Internet, you can do anything with either system, but Apple and AOL will take every opportunity it can to patronize you. Some people like that, some people need it. Others understand what is going on and find that the 'easy to use' features prevent them from building up a mental picture of what is going on.
This explains the reason why Apple users want a Hard disk icon, it is a major landmark in their mental model. Take it away and they are all at sea.
There are major problems with the hierarchical directory concept. These arise because there is more than one good way to arrange information. Hierarchical directories force you to pick just one.
There have been plenty of systems that supported alternative schemes, the Symbolics mail system (which I won't discuss because if you have used it you already know the point), the RAND mh mail handler. mh allows you to filter mail into folders (don't they all), unlike other schemes however, mh allows you to use soft links to file a mail in multiple directories. So a mail that is sent to you directly and to a mailing list appears in BOTH folders. Unfortunately the version I used did not know how to then keep track of the fact that a mail had been read in a different folder.
A better scheme would be to support 'standing searches' so that instead of separating your mail, files whatever into separate folders everything went in one big folder that you could view through multiple filters. So when the mail arrives you have some filter that processes the mail and adds keywords to it, allowing rapid searches when you need them, which can be saved for leater re-use.
There are the beginnings of such a system in Windows XP and W2K. Unfortunately it does not really go far enough (yet). It is at least possible to view the title, author, keywords etc of documents in the Explorer window. The standing search capability is not implemented but could be added.
It would be quite easy to add similar functionality into GNOME or whatever.
I don't find any value in discussing such concepts through confused descriptions of 'desktops' and 'multiple desktops'. The desktop is a cretinous metaphor. I have a screen, it displays a collection of applications, I can switch to a different screen showing other applications. My single physical display can show multiple virtual screens, big deal.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Usability fucks really piss me off. Usability is a result of choice not of some decree that a particular way is the RIGHT way to do things. If a usability group fells that there is a better way to do things, they need to get off their asses and write the code to do it, instead of telling other people how to design. Let their version compete with others through the only real test for usability... survival of the fittest.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
From the: Well,-can't-you-handle-chewing-gum-and-dancing? dept.
The idea behind this article is that there are too many spatial configurations in a operating system for a user to be able to cope and concentrate on information flowing from one to the other. The desktop represents one type of spatial configuration (limited movement, space, etc.) while the hard disk icon represents another (limitless space, movement beyond the edges, etc.). The author proposes that it is asking too much of users to be able to make these spatial conversions.
Now, let's think about this. Don't you already do spatial conversions all the time? You think of a house, that's in 3D, usually (in your mind). You go to an architecht, he draws the house in 2D (on paper), maybe with some 3D perspectives, but still in 2D. You take this to a contractor, and they construct the house in 3D! This is spatial conversion, folks. We all learned to do it as children, converting the spaces of normal paper into 3D houses, turkeys, etc....whatever those projects were in 3rd grade.
It still comes down to a learning curve and ability scale. Most everyone will learn a system faster if they don't have to do spatial conversions. Therefore, for the ease of learning, such a "desktop only" system might be pertinent. However, computers are complex things and are expected to encompass a lot of different information in a lot of different configurations. Limiting yourself to one spatial relationship will only limit you in the end as to what you can store, manage, and organize. Having both the desktop and the hard drive paradigms to manage information will result in the ability to store the vast amounts of different information available.
Blog,Twitter
He cites the different rules between desktops and file systems as the reason to kill off file systems, but he ignores the facts that the desktop's rules are arbitrary limitations due to the metaphor, while the file systems rules are based the actual limitations of the computer itself (generally speaking.) Which makes more sense to kill?
Here's what I would do if I sensed that someone was really having a problem with the whole desktop/file system concept: Kill the destop and create a folder (say, "Applications") and create shortcuts/aliases/links to all the programs the user would really need. You get all the benefits of simplified program selection without having to learn the desktop metaphor. What really killed the simplicity of the old system (finding the program executable and running it) was the expansion of programs to require more than just a single executable file.
-sk
... when you can pry it from my cold dead fingers!!!!
:)
Someone had to say it
The Anti-Blog
What would be the advantage? Extra space? We have multiple desktops and three or four methods of window minimization and hiding. Easier navigation? Since when can't you map a tree into 2D perfectly adequately, and simply? We have a few ways of doing that, too. More intuitive interface? Sorry, but there's nothing intuitive about having to look around in multiple dimensions (mapped, incidentally, to two dimensions on your monitor) to find a window or icon or whatever you've misplaced.
As long as our data is primarily text-based and our displays are physically two-dimensional, 3D interfaces are going to both be pointless and suck. And you'd be hard put to convince me that a physical 3D interface would be practical for most applications.
Sorry, but the gee-whiz-neato-"imagine all the pretty polyhedrons" just doesn't translate into "good idea".
I agree that things are a bit complicated.
To those of us who still think as if we were using a cli... who understand what's going on in the background.. it's not so bad.
To joe average.. the fact that his desktop is in his hard drive,but he has to get to the hard drive from the desktop is a bit confusing.
I agree that the 'drives' mentality is a bit messed, as far as basic computer usage goes.. but is it really? I mean, it reflects upon reality.
Folders getting too deeply nested for gui clicks? OH well.. that just means people will tend NOT to do so.
Anything you do to make the desktop 'simpler', though it may help joe average, will also make it MORE complex for us to troubleshoot problems. You have to add more abstraction, not less, to get rid of the HD icon.
Perhaps one solution to this would be to use a couple permanent menus - they can be dragged like windows, but they persist like the icons on your desktop. The options would be plain English (or German, or whatever) like 'Open an Application' or 'Find a Document' or 'Play a Game'. But how would you access it efficiently when an app was covering it? How would you make it obvious to a newbie?
Reboot macht Frei.
Bash completion is great. It really makes using the keyboard productive.
... you could use the *same* command line for different applications. Anyone got any details on this?
And yeah, MS has noticed that too. Support for Autocomplete has improved with IE5/Win2000, now I get autocomplete in cmd.exe, and in most File Open/Save dialog boxes.
Whats interesting is, MS has been talking about a "universal command line" (perhaps attached to the start bar) as one of the possible features for "Longhorn" (2004-5?) (ahh, can't find a link).
This apparently would feature auto-complete as well as context-sensitivity
Guy,
You calm down - I'm just quoting various studies. Believe it or not, we are smarter than the norm
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Both the desktop and a folder metaphor is inacurate. Nobody but me understands MY desktop, but everybody understands a forest.
Until we store files on the harddrives differently (non-hierarchical) there will always be a diference in the WYSIHWTDI 'what you see is where the data is' views.
A disk is equivilant to a tree. A tree has branches(path), and leaves (files). In a forest I can see all the leaves or just one branch, or a leaf. If I prune a tree that branch is gone. If I move a branch, I cut and graft (not paste) Vines are interlinks between fiels, and sometimes trees. Devices are fruits(mp3 devices) and or flowers/nuts.
Now when I see a 3D version of my forest then it will be good.
Trees was the original metaphor.
Now, where was that hedge trimmer?
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Consider the folliwing:
When we planned the addition on our house, we engaged the services of an architect. He took us through the design, starting with extracting our requirements/needs/wants (my list also had to go through the wife filter, but that's a separate story) and sketched out a couple of proposed designs on the spot. We spent a fair amount of time just suggesting random things/improvements/modifications to his design, and eventually he went away with a big pile of notes.
The architect came back with a proposed design, and took us through it, including explaining relevant building codes and material issues, as well as adding a certain amount of value just from his knowledge. After a couple of iterations of this, we approved the plan, and got quotes from contractors to build it.
At various points during the construction, issues came up and we worked with the contractor to resolve them (usually by writing a bigger check). And we got a nice addition which looked very much like the one we wanted!
So why does it work so well in the real world, and less well in the software world?
Communication. We had a clearly defined specification, produced by the architect and approved by us. At various times during construction, we were told about issues and given choices. We were given the cost of each.
Visibility. We were able to see the work progressing, so (when they brought the wrong window and tried to install it) we were able to say "Hang on, that's not what we agreed to.
Accountability (1). Waving the big stick (check for completion) gave us a lot of leverage with the contractor if he was going in the wrong direction.
Accountability (2). Conversely, we were told that the contractor could do anything we wanted, but it would cost time and money, especially money. Any work done over and above the original contract was documented and signed off on.
So can you do this in software? Yes, but you need a couple of (rare) things:
A Manager/Project Leader (of either gender) with Big Brass Balls who can stand up to various people and say "Here's the impact of doing that".
Agreed-on goals/requirements, with key people accountable for both ensuring that they are met and for communicating them to the key players.
Communication amongst the developers and between the developers and the other stakeholders.
Something of a sense that the end-customer isn't a "luser"
Of course, that's my opinion -- I could be wrong.
Cthulhu Barata Nikto
Sorry this is a completely invalid assertation. you cannot map the entire HD using multiple desktops. My current system has a 5 gig, a 10 gig, a 30 gig, a CD-RW, and a zip. I need a file manager. My home directory alone has almost half a gig of data and files on it.
There are some fallicies with the HD system. for instance if I mount a zip, a CD or a floppy it would be nice if they were mounted under my $HOME rather than /mnt or /. (I'm well aware that this can be done with softlinks etc...) Under Win XX the desktop doesn't correspond to a reasonable storage location: My Documents. But the START button was a good concept, but poor implementation. Apps need to be easily accessable with a menu. IMHO works much better than cluttering up my desktop space with icons. Under Win whenever an app. puts something on my desktop it get's deleted.
As far as improving usability, GUI systems really don't 'need' much more than they already have. (Specifice tasks may need work, networking, and security.) But highly skilled developers don't need to be worrying about the fact that Grandma, doesn't know that the icon with the letter is for email. That's what her 10 year old grandchildren are for.
Here again is another fallicy I have good reason to rarely run more than 4 VDs There is good reason why the heirarchal directory structure has remained and even become integrated into file structures.
It's easy to maintain and navigate. I fail to understand how navigating 8 levels down in a tree is more complex than navigating 8 VDs. With the 8 VDs you have prev, current and next. With the tree, you have parent, current, and maybe children.
Another invalid assertation, I have 37 directors in $HOME, not counting .directories How many desktops to would I have to navigate to find what I'm looking for? Perhaps I'm stupid, cynical is more like it, but I fail to understand how having potentially 37 VDs would help me with file management and storage. And incidentally I do not have a HD icon on my desktop, nor even a link to $HOME, that's on a menu under my right mouse button. Where it can be accessed anytime, but is out of the way.
While usability is still a concern I believe the author picked the subject more to get attention, that to actually foster innovation, and it appears to have worked.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The average person wants a super-simple, easy-to-use PC. (Slashdotters are definitely not average.)
Most people do not understand file management or how their operating system works. They identify only with the applications they use. That is why when you ask someone what OS they run they will tell you "Office 2000" or somesuch. The applications are the OS to these people.
In that respect, a streamlined OS for the average user should be transparent. The user should spend little time thinking about where files are stored or what folders are where. Get them into their applications and make locating files easy. The less time spent moving files around or making your icons line up pretty, the better.
We need the Beatles. They could not read sheet music and did not know they were breaking all the rules for song writing. They wrote new rules that worked. We need a new OS written by someone whose ideas are not hindered by the assumptions that have brought us to where we are today.
I double checked - the average programmer is that high on SOME scales - but tends to be in the 130+ range on most scales - aka 98th percentile and up
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
>the GNU people (it was the GNU, people
>right?)
Yes.
>that decided that 'man' wasn't good enough and
>they wanted to reinvent it;
It's not that they wanted to reinvent itthat's a probelem; that would have been survivable. It's that info is just plain an abomination. It seems to be an "emacs everywhere" notion. It's a pain to navigate, counter-intuitive, and the type of thing that could only have come out of the emacs or redmond mentalities.
hawk
Perhaps one solution to this would be to use a couple permanent menus - they can be dragged like windows
Why make them draggable? There is a very good reason to make commonly used UI elements stuck in a permenant place - they are always in the same spot and easy to find. After a while "muscle memory" takes over and you don't even think about the location - this is much faster and once learned truly 'intuitive'. (there are certain menu and key combinations I don't consciously remember. People ask me "how do I do so-and-so and I can't answer, I have to sit at the computer for my hands to remember for me) This is why I like the Mac way of always putting the menu in the same spot (which they did just for that purpose) even though the windows way seems more logical (menu physically tied to the window it is applicable to).
But then, on the Mac at least (I'm less familiar with windows), there already are permenent menus for such commands. And there are customisable menus where I can add any missing function I want.
Those who wrote this article: My Windoze 2000 machine has about 211,000 files on it. Now please show me how to oraganize all these files into a set of stacked desktops. While you're at it please show me what stacked desktops are. I don't think these guys really understand what they're talking about. I don't think the hard disk icon is bad. Instead of doing away with the hard disk icon, the hard disk icon should become the desktop. This is because the metaphor should model the actual structure of what it represents. That's the whole idea of a metaphor for Pete's sake! If the hard disk is a hierarchical tree of directories and files, this should be reflected in the metaphor. If the metaphor doesn't reflect the actual structure of what it represents, then you end up with confusion because of the mismatch.
Jeez, man, jump on down off your high horse. I don't belive you have an IQ of 150, and I am positive that the average computer programmer doesn't.
IQ is most often measured with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. On this scale, your average physician and your average attorney have an IQ of about 115.
This is obvious self-selection bias. The overall groups have a tendency to select out individuals with lower IQs through exclusionary pressures such as the grades required for medschool/lawschool, the difficulty of passing the courses, and the difficulty of completing the professional examinations required to enter the career.
Note that I'm not making any definite remark on the IQ of the average software guy. I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar. While the pressures aren't as formalized, one doesn't tend to go into this field and get a computer science degree without already being fairly exceptional.
The other poster's remarks that programmer's are likely generally smarter on average than the general population are most certainly correct.
C//
Been there, done that: A Good Use For A Dead Clown
but tends to be in the 130+ range on most scales
Some measurements of IQ use a standard deviation of about ~25, while most of the rest use 15. This means that an IQ of 150 or an IQ of 130 can be basically the same, depending on the test used to determine the IQ score. You correctly beelined in on percentile, which is what actually provides IQ as a test with any of its meaningfulness. It doesn't so much as test your intelligence, but rather how intelligent you are relative to the rest of the population.
C//
I have for a long time thought that having desktop icons was a dumb idea. REMOVE them. They are the complete problem here, if the root-window didn't try to emulate a directory folder; there would be no confusion.
This is how it should be: there is a panel at one of the sides of the screen, the rest is a "workspace" where programs visually reside.
The panel/dock should provide some kind of visual clue that things can be added and removed from it. It will now be seen like an advanced kind of menu, rather then an extension of the filesystem.
There really is NO reason to confuse users with having launchers for programs in the same physical area as where programs run; It should be like a windshield in a car, keeping the programs away from the driver.. The controls (and launchers) should all be on the inside of the windshield.
Computere are a lot more like cars then you think.
Is Mr. Loebl really thinking about what he is suggesting here?
He says that the directory system is confusing because it is limitless, and suggests some vaguely defined notion of unlimited space. So he advocates using "desktops", which have fixed "physical" limits. But then to get around the obvious problems with having such limits, he suggests using many virtual desktops accessed by some sort of menu or taskbar. Um...hello? The only difference between a hierarchial directory structure (a collection of folders inside one single "root" directory, each of which can contain files or more folders) and a system of multiple virtual desktops (a collection of "desktop" areas inside a single logical collection, each of which can contain files or folders) is that the desktops have artificial and arbitraty limits on how much stuff they can hold. How exactly does limiting the number of items you can place in a unit make it less confusing to use? Is it worse to have to search through 100 files in one directory to find what you're looking for than to navigate through ten different desktops with ten files each? And if it is, why can the user not simply create ten NEW directories, if that is how they wish to organize their stuff?
Basically, the desktop system Loebel is proposing is a hierarchial directory structure where the directories don't have scroll bars. Where is the logic in that?
As for making computers easier to use...that's a very hard task. As a rule, the more a particular tool can accomplish, the more complex it is to use. A computer is a tool that has virtually limitless applications, and as a result, it is a complicated tool to use. The problem is, end users want computers to be as simple as a toaster to operate, but they also want all of the functionality of a full-fledged computer system. Sorry, folks, but such a thing simply isn't possible. You can have ease of use or you can have a broad range of functionality...but you can't have both. That's not to say that it's not possible to make current systems *easier* to use while preserving functionality, but a computer will never be a toaster, nor should it be.
A hierarchial file system is not that hard to learn to use. Yes, it does require some time and effort to learn, but it is far from impossible. A complete novice can't turn their computer on for the first time and instantly know how the Windows file system works, but it is certainly possible to learn. Anyone who wants to use a computer should devote some time to learning the basics. It's no different than driving a car or using any other complicated device. You don't sit behind the wheel of a car and instantly know all of the traffic laws, or all of the functions of your vehicle. You had to study them first, and learn about them. The same goes for using a computer. And you don't have to know how compile your own kernel or write shell scripts to use a computer to write e-mail, any more than you need to know the inner workings of your car's engine to drive it. These more complicated things can be learned later, if you have the interest and the time, but there are still some basics that you should know when you start using a computer.
DennyK
Good point, and how many VCR's out there have a blinking 12:00 on the display? Maybe they should remove the clock and the ability to program a VCR, as it is too complicated for most people.
This is something I have never been able to comprehend about "today's" average user - they are seemingly unable to comprehend the meaning and effective use of a hierarchical tree-based organizational system.
Why this is, I don't know. It perhaps has something to do with how the "average" person is, compared to us "computer geeks".
Average people tend to deal easily with relationships, and this reflects in many individual's organizational skills. Things go with other things, and then are stored in a file cabinet, generally in alphabetical order. I have heard that there is a school of thought in filing that says you should never put a folder in a folder - a real world axiom that is blown out of the water by current directory structures.
Microsoft tried to demystify directories by using a folder analogy in Windows 95 and beyond, but broke the rules by allowing folders in folders.
Perhaps the "average" user would repond more to icons shaped like a file cabinet (named whatever they wanted), with the ability at the "root" level to create "infinite" drawers (and nothing else) named or organized however they like (alphabetical, by date, by number, etc), with each drawer allowing "infinite" folders (named and organized, but only within the limit established by the drawer - ie, if a drawer is named "a-m", it can have a folder named "accounting", but not one named "shipping"), and each folder can hold as many "documents" (of any type? or maybe limited by folder parameters?) as needed, organised and name however.
But in no case can folders hold folders, nor can drawers hold drawers, nor can cabinets hold cabinets, etc - perhaps there can be links from one folder (document type of "link"?) to another, to establish relationships between documents across folders and drawers...
This metaphor would extend the desktop analogy, and be more useful to the average individual - it could be termed a "Cabinet, Drawers, Folders and Documents" metaphor - more closely modeled on the "real world".
Perhaps certain cabinets can hold applications (and nothing else), which can be dragged to the desktop if they are used frequently. Perhaps there could also be application "groupings" available as well - to allow the use of multiple apps that are for one logical application (such as a paint program, a photo editor, a scanning program, and a word processor, for a DTP application - drage the "DTP Group" out, and all of these applications would be brought out).
I would be a fool to think that this metaphor hasn't been dreamed up before. I think it could be easily implemented on today's standard systems. Perhaps it might make an interesting desktop system for Linux - maybe even something that could cause a gain for wide acceptance? I don't know if it would be useful for developers or other more technical audiences - but who knows? I do think that if the underlying system were hidden from the user, such an extension of the desktop metaphor would be a boon to the average user.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Maybe they should remove the clock
Actually, I found a Panasonic like that about 8 years ago and purchased it. I have enough clocks in my family room and don't need one more that is perpetually one minute too fast or slow compared to the other clocks around it. The VCR has 4 heads, MTS stereo, and is programmable. The time shows up the screen when I need to see it. I'm surprised it was so hard to find.
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Played with GTK's open widget? I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Why? It incorporates the best of the mouse-based paradigm that users are used to and additionally adds the keyboard-based commands that power users crave.
Have some (well-written) GTK apps installed? (Some apps written by less-clued folks try to implement their own open boxes... ugh!). Open such an application and go to file/open (alt+f o). Now, type part of a filename and press . If possible, the filename will be completed for you; if several options are available, the windowed listing will be reduced to them. If the only option is a directory, you'll instantly see the contents of that directory (and if it has only one subdirectory, you'll be instantly inside that too). There are lots of other goodies it's capable of as well (some globbing capabilities, &c).
The point of this is that it's possible to write an interface which is intuitive for first-time users but also insanely powerful for power users. It also demonstrates how a good set of underlying libraries can provide applications with really nifty functionality without the programmer even having to be aware that it's available.
Alan Cooper says that programmers can't design good programs but he is wrong. Programmers can learn to design programs as well as anyone else. The problem is that no one else is particularly good at designing programs either.
I remember a part in Alan Cooper's book _The Inmates are Running the Asylum_ where he was complaining about stupid car door remote controls. He had various gripes but at the end he said something like, "The other thing that annoys me is that sometimes other people's remotes accidentally unlock your door. There should be another button to put the car into secure mode where that won't happen." Um... HELLO??? A option for security? There shouldn't even be a choice about something as basic as that. When the car locks it should darn well be secure.
The problem is that Alan Cooper didn't think about what he was designing. He just threw the option for "added security" on at the end without thinking about it.
Most programmers don't think about it either.
In real life though customers and bosses often end up designing the user interface and they are just as bad. Worse even...
In fact, I wouldn't call this designing because there is no actual design process involved, the boss will just draw something up off the top of her head and have the programmer write it.
The biggest UI problem with applications today is not that they were poorly designed but that they weren't designed at all.
Part of the problem is education. Most CS graduates have never had a single UI course.
What the hell does that mean? That there's some point where you just can't click the mouse just *one* more time?
"Spiraling file systems..."
God, I hope I'm not around to watch this guy freak out the first time he comes across a self-referential symbolic link..
And we continue:
But wait a minute! Just a moment ago we were spiraling downward into a maelstrom of "endless depth" from which no mouse could escape, let alone get us into in the first place...
Which is it?
What has this guy been smoking?
A hard drive is "vague"?
Funny. I've always found cd /var/log/snort, for example, to be pretty goddam specific.
But maybe I'm missing something...
Ah! here's a hint:
One of them Mac-using graphic "artists"
heh..
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Dude, it's out there. Look at systems like IBM's OS/400. In fact, since VM is part of the disk, there is no difference between objects in memory or on disk. It's called a "single level storage" model and it rocks.
On the other hand, the storage paradigm used in the PC architecture provides several levels of backup: 1. backup in volatile memory of the state of the document the most recent command performed, 2. backup on nonvolatile memory (flash or magnetic) of each last "approved" set of edits, and 3. further backups elsewhere on disk, on removable media, or on a network.
The problem with single-level storage is that applications that use it tend to edit documents in place, doing away with 2 above. This makes for frustrating work when you want to revert to the last saved version, especially if the app has only a small number of undo levels. This bit me in the @$$ several times in NewtonWorks's word processor. Users can, and will, forget to do number 3, and they will lose data.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Let's reverse the analogy from the world inside your computer to the world inside your study. Inside this extra room in your house you have a desk, maybe a couple. There's lots on floor too, and the desk has a large horizontal surface on it. It's damn easy to find things if you just plonk them around on the desk.. and maybe throw a few on the floor when your desk is covered.. Hmm.. what happens when we start adding some more items.
We've now exceeded the 'visual clutter' that's mentioned in the article, but I need to put all my tax receipts somewhere! Hmm, let's start putting things in piles.. Tax here, correspondence there, incoming faxes there.. damn, these piles keep falling over.. Let's put the paperwork inside some manilla folders and keep them together with staples.. and maybe a rubber band round the folder.
Damn. All these folders all over my desk and floor. I keep tripping over them while I search for the one piece of paper I need. I need a better way of stacking them. Better buy a filing cabinet! Let's put all these folders into the cabinet and organise it in some sort of way.. maybe alphabetical order. I should probably label the cabinet too, so I can tell which one it is if I buy another one. I'll call this one /dev/hda.
Cool! Now I can find things quickly because it's all nicely organised, but not staring me in the face 24 hours a day when I don't need it. Now my desktop is clear for me to use for the 2-3 things I happen to be working on right now, ready to be filed away when I've finished with them.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you.
Look, if everything in life is dumbed down so the lowest common denominator can use it, then we as a people, the human race, will not progress any further than we are.
Sure, sure, computers are just tools for most people, yes yes that's nice. But computers are COMPLICATED tools, like a car, or a high powered impact wrench. They require SOME learning. While most people can't replace a timing chain or a head gasket, most people can't install an OS. Do we remove a car's engine so noone gets confused about how it works?
But not everyone needs to learn the intimate details of these tools. For using a car, there is a simple requirement of learning how to drive one. That's a complicated thing, you need to learn all the traffic rules, get the feel of steering, braking, etc. Like a directory tree however, there is an elegant simplicity to it that anyone can grasp. And with a directory, it's much, much simpler.
Learning how a directory tree works is something ANYONE who isn't mentally handicapped can do. Granted, there are many other aspects of computers that can be simplified and made easier, but dumbing down the directory tree is not one of them... Damn, it's just a friggin simple tree, it takes 5 minutes to learn the concept. Driving a car takes months, yet nearly everyone in America learns. Now that everyone needs to use computers, it's time for people to quit being stubborn and learn how to use them.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Customers of such projects tend to want to see how it will work when it's done (often in mid-project). They want a mock-up. The problem with a mock-up is that it's extremely hard to make a mock-up that doesn't actually do anything, especially when the best way to do the coding and Making It All Work At All is by building the back-end first and then doing the front end. (like building a house, you put up the framework and do the wiring and plumbing before you put up the gyproc and paint it, covering up the ugliness that makes it all work) In essence, what the customers of software want is to have their house built with the gyproc first, so they can see what it will look like and how well it can be used before the kitchen sink and the dishwasher go in.
But you're very right. We could and should take the analogy the other way, and have a real designer do real design work that gets finalized before the builders even start their work. Unfortunately, this is pretty rare in the real world of programming.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Orson Welles found out about this language, and found it so horrifying that he adapted it and called it "Newspeak" in 1984.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota