Donald Norman On Software And Other Things

small but... writes "New Scientist has published an interview with Donald Norman in which Norman comments on open source (disparagingly), usability (of course), machine 'emotion' (Ha!), and security (Breaking news: social engineering still #1 risk)."

Comments

Is it just me...

[echophase]

...or does he look like he's got shaving cream on his face?

Re:Is it just me...

[Elbereth]

You infant.. santa does not exist (if your momma didn't tell you) and how the fuck would you know how santa looks like?

There should have been a spoiler warning before this comment!

disparagingly?

[djradon]

I don't know if I'd call Don's assertion that UI design is best done by a "tyrant" disparaging. Maybe he's on to something that open-source needs to adopt?

IMO, ideally, open-source will allow any user to be his own tyrant, by separating content from implementation via open data standards (file and interchange formats) and distributed data storage and synchronization.

Re:disparagingly?

[Sunlighter]

I don't think Don understands that the Linux kernel is "dictated" by Linus Torvalds and Perl is "dictated" by Larry Wall, etc.

Yes, there is a threat of forking. But that's what keeps these "dictators" honest.

Re:disparagingly?

[reallocate]

Yes, but Perl and the kernel aren't UI issues.

Building the world's slickest transmission won't do the driver any good if you forget to show him how to find third gear.

Folks who want to see Linux leave the server ghetto should take some of these observations to heart.

Re:disparagingly?

[swankypimp]

Norman doesn't like the fact that nonprofessionals design UIs, since UI specialists will generally come up with a more usable design. In many window managers and "themes" I've found, usability is sacrificed for sweet-ass transparent gizmos and l33t graphics. What Norman misses, though, is that open source window managers can take risks that major for-profit companies will not.

The problem with most operating system GUIs (as I see it, as do Nielson and Gentner ) is that they follow the "desktop" metaphor, where the main onscreen workspace is a "desktop." You have easy access to different tasks you would do, like a calendar or letter-writing program. "Documents" reside inside the desk in different drawers. At this point, the methaphor breaks down: you get desktop shortcuts (or wharf buttons or whatever), which have no real-world counterpart and are confusing to people who are not familiar with the underlying file systems; you get programs that do specialized tasks that are in no sense connected to sitting at your desk and doing office work. In short, the desktop metaphor is fairly limited.

The desktop GIU is ubiquitous enough that people have a passing familiarity with it, however, so the major OS makers won't blow it up and start with a professionally designed UI based on a better concept. (maybe this will change in the next decade when we move to 3d GUIs, into which Microsoft has poured tons of research money). Open source wms can be much more experiemental, and may lead to some ideas that UI experts can later refine.

Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[ebbomega]

The fact of the matter is the only people that I've seen that haven't been able to comprehend what's going on on their computer screen are technophobes and luddites. Which brings us to a simple gross generalisation to go along with all of the ones put forth:

If you're willing to embrace technology, then you'll be willing to learn how to use it.

Explaining the concepts behind a GUI aren't that hard. This is a "Mouse". See? It's got a little mousey tail! When you move it, that thing on the screen (it's called a cursor) moves.

Now, when you put the cursor over something and click with that left button it's calling "clicking on" that item. If you click it twice real fast, it's called (You still with me?) "Double Clicking".

Double Clicking opens up this program. This program is called [foo]. It does [bar].

Done. And suddenly my grandmother can check her e-mail.

Granted, the setup is a bit more complex than that, but these days we have plenty of professionals to not just guide you through that, but DO IT FOR YOU! Concept.

I don't think the Internet is badly designed. It's a data haven (almost... or at least was). Lack of rules means that anybody willing to put in the effort of wading through noise can get to anything in said haven.

Having rules, structure, and protocols so limiting as to make the internet "user-friendly" or any shit like that limits what you can do on the internet. Don't believe me? Go ahead. Try to use AOL to find copies of the Anarchist's cookbook without using the unspecified and user-unfriendly "Web".

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[semaj]

Everything you mentioned took me about 10 minutes to accept and memorise, when I was about 10 years old.

I don't think I was especially gifted .. just willing to learn. I think older people especially need to accept that *shock* they don't know everything, and there's still things worth learning!

If everything's simple, easy to use and unchanging - where's the progress?

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Kaiwen]

the only people that I've seen that haven't been able to comprehend ...

You haven't seen too many people, have you? There are plenty of folks who neither fear nor oppose technology -- not a few, in fact, who recognize its value -- yet who, nonetheless, are hopelessly confused by it.

This is a "Mouse". See? It's got a little mousey tail! When you move it, that thing on the screen (it's called a cursor) moves.

Ignoring for a moment the condescending tone of your remarks, in fact, recognizing the correlation between the movements of a mouse and an onscreen cursor is not as automatic for many people are you assume. Like learning to throw a ball, it's actually a quite complex physiological-mental process which can break down at many points. Sure most folks -- especially those of us who have been using computers for any length of time -- think of it as the simplest of tasks, but easy does not mean automatic, and we must not lose sight of that fact.

If you click it twice real fast, it's called (You still with me?) "Double Clicking".

Don't get me started on double-clicking -- one of the stupidest GUI design decisions in Microsoft's less-than-illustrious career. I can't count the number of users I've worked with who just can't -- for whatever reason -- complete a double-click. Some are unable to hold the mouse steady enough between clicks. Others can't complete two clicks fast enough for the computer to recognize the "double" in "double-click" (yes, you and I know both of these settings are configurable; how many Joe Technophobes would?).

And why the left mouse button? Why not the right? Did you know many people have difficulty distinguishing between left and right? Did you know men are better at it than women?

Apple got at least this much right -- give them one button, and don't make them push it more than once. But, for my money, a touch-screen is still the most intuitive interface.

Double Clicking opens up this program. This program is called [foo]. It does [bar].

You mean if I want this computer to do something I have to open a "program"? Why? Why can't it just do what I want it to do?

And suddenly my grandmother can check her e-mail.

Yeah, sure. All she has to do is learn what a mouse is, figure out how to coordinate its movements with an onscreen cursor she may or may not be able to see, remember which button to click and how many times to click it, remember to hold it real steady while she's clicking it, figure out what an icon is and which blasted one represents e-mail (whatever that is).... And that all assumes she even understands why she should care. "If I want to talk with someone", she might say, "what's wrong with the phone?"

Lee Kaiwen
Taiwan, ROC

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[evilviper]

Apple got at least this much right -- give them one button, and don't make them push it more than once.

Well, I can tell you've never used a Mac. Double-clicking is required on the mac desktop, and the file manager. That is, until you change that setting. Of course, that same type of change can be made in Windows as well.

Besides that, the Mac equivalent of a right-click is just holding CTRL+Clicking, or clicking and holding the mouse button. Would you like to say that is somehow better than the way Windows does it?

And, that method didn't even start until Win 95. Win 3.1 would give you a menu if you just single-clicked on an icon... So I guess that means Microsoft had it right all along (according to you).

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Mac Degger]

I used to train people in the use of Windows and Office. And you're right: sometimes someone comes along straight out of helpdesk mythology. The one who picks up the mouse and points it at the screen, that kind of thing.

But trust me, thats one in a hundred, or less than that. And usually, it's because these people want extra attention, not innability to comprehend what's going on: it's called willfull ignorance.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[SerpentMage]

What people tend to forget is that we actually had to learn to read a dashboard on a car.

For a fair comparison take yourself back to when horse and buggies were the transportation of the day. Do you REALLY think people knew what to make of a car, with its steering wheel, brakes and gas pedal? I THINK NOT! If I may quote Alan Cooper a GUI specialist, often the best user interface is not the friendliest, but the one that solves the task most efficiently. Case in point spreadsheet. Nobody ever asks again how to manipulate numbers on a spreadsheet. But yet a spreadsheet in its full form is rather complex. So why can we use a spreadsheet? Because we learned it!

The real test, which was proven by your comment is that it took you ten minutes to learn when you were ten years old. And since it took ten minutes I see it like a dashboard that you learned and moved on.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[AvitarX]

Let's not forget the dirtieness of fingers. I like to keep my hands clean for typing on my keyboard, but if I had to touch my screen it would really suck.

Also the actual quality of a topuch screen for anything except interactive clicky interfaces sucks. It would be nearly impossible to select text that was less then an inch high using my fat (relative to a mouse) fingers. Or imagine hitting the curser inbetween the correct two characters (of course new users already can't do that).

I really think the greasiness is the worse part though. If a touch screen interface as standard is being worked on by any of the usability experts, its release will mark the total overun of usability wiping out functionality (from what I've read here, XP marked the start, well, windows did before that, and so does gnome or WM, or WM over a console, or emacs over vi) but the touch screen is just sucky.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[aluminumcube]

Double Clicking opens up this program. This program is called [foo]. It does [bar].

You mean if I want this computer to do something I have to open a "program"? Why? Why can't it just do what I want it to do?

Actually, as an open source noob, I have to say that the whole 'program Foo' that does 'Bar' is probably the most danuting aspect of the whole community to me.

So many Open Source programs have the dumbest, most unintuitive names ever. Gnome? What the hell is that supposed to do with a GUI? Evolution? Evolution of what? Even Apache... what does a famous tribe of indiginous American peoples have to do with serving web pages?

At least if you call your shiny new advanced ground attack helecopter "Apache", you can draw some comparative to the native tribe's famous warfighting abilities.

I think the whole silly OSS naming problem is indicative of the community's general lack of concern for making useable software. For the most part, OSS fosters a community of like minded individuals who have a passion for tinkering, which is a great thing. Unfortunatly, this same passion and focuse tends to alienate those of us who aren't quite as talented with the command line or aren't willing to invest a huge chunk of time in trying to figure out lots of technical minusha to simply get our computers to work.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[eatdave13]

Let me guess, you wipe people's asses for a living, right?

None of the objections you had were even close to the level of skill and ability it takes to be a productive member of society. These issues absolutely should NOT be addressed in the baseline computer system, and if you wonder why, ask yourself, is every staircase in your house replaced by a wheelchair ramp?

Every single one of the skills you have outlined here are also required for another even more common activity... driving! If you can't move one object and recognize that it moves another object in proportion, you have brain damage and need special care. If you can't hold a mouse steady, or can't see the mouse cursor, you are handicapped and need special care. If you can't tell the difference between left and right, you are handicapped and need special care. If you can't understand a simple concept like opening a program to do something, even if you only see the word "program" as a synonym for the word "action", you are mentally retarded. Don't get on the road and endanger my life, and don't get on my computer and endanger my productivity.

The interface you propose has almost the exact same problems as the one you want to replace. If you can't hold a mouse steady, what's to stop you from pressing the wrong place on the touchscreen? Perhaps you meant touchhugefuckingwall. How are you going to tell the computer to perform different actions without having some way of activating it? You want to take away icons? What are we supposed to replace them with? Words? We already have that, it's called a menu. Should we speak at it? Ooh, but then I have to remember that blasted word "e-mail". Maybe we should just think real hard at them and hope something happens.

Special people need special support, and sometimes, they don't get to do what they want to do. A man with no legs is never going to win the gold medal in the 400-meter dash. There is no one magical paradigm that works for everyone and trying to achieve that is just going to screw everyone over... just look at Windows. It tries to be everything to everyone, and in the end it's just a mediocre tool for me and a confusing mess for the non-techie.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[reallocate]

Good post. My experience mirrors yours.

For someone who has never seem a computer, a GUI is no more intuitive than the inside of a car is to someone who has never seen a car. (Think about it: If you'd never seen a car, would you even know how to start it?)

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[reallocate]

Remind me to avoid hiring or working with you.

An intuitive interface is one that, ideally, requires no training, no learning, no manuals. Your equation of failure to intuit unintuitive and poorly designed tools with mental defects is just one more indication that many in the tech community are contemptuous of users. Computers are tools for everyone, not just toys for techies.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[blibbleblobble]

If you click it twice real fast, it's called (You still with me?) "Double Clicking".

Yeah, let the original commentor try double-clicking with a pen-and-tablet.

Got that? Still with me? Now try right-click-dragging (to create shortcuts in windows). How accurate were you? Did you manage to select the left-click menu that follows, or did your finger slip off the button whilst dragging?

Double Clicking opens up this program. This program is called [foo]. It does [bar].

Now try double-clicking. Try it in an application like WS_FTP, where double-clicking the wrong thing can delete a page off your website. Notice how when you click on one thing, then right-click for a menu, that counts as a double-click?

Try it in a different application. How about visual basic? Click to select a control, drag to move it. Oops, looks like you did that too fast: it got counted as a double-click, and now you've opened a code-editing window.

( Don't forget you can set windows to operate in single-click mode. (View::Folder options::web-style). But your common dialog boxes will still be double-click )

And suddenly my grandmother can check her e-mail.

Honestly? If someone has trouble using a mouse, you could do worse than giving them Pine as an email program, and Links as a browser. Unplug your mouse someday, and try using your standard programs.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, I agree with your criticisms of the poster's tone, but I have to say that everything he or she described was mastered by all 4 of children shortly before or shortly after reaching the age of 2.

Some things are quite intuitive for people who are open to learning. Another benefit is that a two-year-old os not afraid to break something.

However, I must say that many of the gains in usability that Microsoft has made over the years is being casually tossed aside in the pursuit of style or look (which itself is horrible). The end effect is software is getting uglier and harder to use.

The other usability problem I've noticed is using cordless phones. Someone handed me a cordless phone the other day and the array of buttons was absurd. The reason phones were so easy to use is that they were all the same... that too is disappearing while companies are scrambling to cram all kinds of gimmicks of marginal (or less) usefulness.

We've reached a point where every product tries to do everything poorly and almost nothing does one thing well.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Kaiwen]

If you can't move one object and recognize that it moves another object in proportion, you have brain damage and need special care.

Ah, yes, the classic blame-the-user rationale: "If he can't figure out my interface, then he's a damn moron."

If you can't hold a mouse steady, what's to stop you from pressing the wrong place on the touchscreen?

The primary problem touchscreens overcome is not an unsteady hand, but the difficulty of correlating the movements of an input device to an onscreen cursor. I don't know anyone -- even the most severely mentally handicapped -- who doesn't understand the concept of touch; sight and touch are the most fundamental interface mechanisms we have. Similarly, my touchscreen training sessions generally last about 4 seconds: "If you want it, touch it." Beats mouse training hands down (no pun intended!). The most usable and intuitive information kiosks I've seen -- in department stores, supplying directory information, etc. -- always use a touchscreen interface combined with a simple menu system -- no more than five items is ideal. Surprisingly, the use of icons vs. words doesn't seem to be of major importance for usability; using both together seems to achieve the best results.

Lee Kaiwen
Taiwan, ROC

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Tim Browse]

I'm curious - this is different to Windows in what way?

That was evilviper's point, after all. Windows supports double-click, or you can use the Open command on the file menu, or press Return. (Certainly back to Windows 95 - I just checked - thanks VMWare!)

Blaming MS for inventing double-clicking seems harsh at best. It smacks of "Apple invented all the good stuff and Microsoft stole it, except when it's bad, in which case Microsoft invented it, the bozos. Even if it appeared first on the Mac."

I think that's what was bugging evilviper.

Indeed, it was the difficulty and hidden nature of double clicks that led Microsoft to create the Start menu. They watched new users trying to use Program Manager to launch a word processor - the results were that new users don't think of double-clicking - nor they did think of using File-Open. So the Start menu was created, which listed all the programs installed, and allowed them to be started with a single click.

That's also why you get that "Click here to run programs" message bouncing onto the screen the first time you run Windows 95.

Tim

Disclaimer: I use Macs and PCs. Hell, I even used to use Acorn machines.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Kaiwen]

I'm pretty confident Microsoft didn't invent double clicking.

I don't claim to be an expert on the history of the double-click. I don't know who invented it, but Microsoft should have refused to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Instead, they built their interface around it.

I'll reiterate what I've already said: double-clicking a mouse is not a physically trivial task. Even people with high manual dexterity not uncommonly fail at it. I know I do. Those with limited digital dexterity -- arthristis sufferers, those with nervous disorders, take your pick -- can find it frustratingly difficult.

I personally use a three-button trackball, but it requires even greater dexterity than a mouse. And it always takes an effort to keep my third finger above the third button, rather than resting on it, where it's liable to unexpectedly pop up a context menu at the most inconvenient of times. Again, not a task for the physically limited.

Lee Kaiwen
Taiwan, ROC

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Kaiwen]

The touch-screen may be the most intuitive .... However, it is one of the hardest interfaces to actually use ... due to the current user interface being designed for a mouse

You're absolutely correct that mouse interfaces and touchscreens were never meant to get along. I should have been more specific: the most intuitive interface for my money is the touchscreen with appropriately-designed interface.

That a touchscreen would require a much simplified menu system (for lack of onscreen real estate) is actually a benefit, as it would force UI designers to simplify their interfaces.

You're also correct that speed and efficiency on the one hand, and ease of use on the other, sometimes find themselves at loggerheads, and one is forced to make choices. Obviously (anyone with a PDA will tell you this), entering text by tapping on a screen will never be as efficient as a keyboard; but then a keyboard has an enormous learning curve.

Lee Kaiwen
Taiwan, ROC

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[uberdave]

Welcome to Slashdot! Finally a legitimate First Post.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[StormReaver]

GNOME (notice it's an acronym): GNU Network Object Model Environment. It's a good name that describes its purpose; to be a complete network based computing environment. The reason it doesn't seem to conform to a name for a GUI is because GNOME is intended to be much more than merely a GUI.

I haven't followed Evolution, but I suspect it's a reference to the next advancement of email systems. Just as Evolution, the natural process, tends to weed out the weakest species, this program is probably intended to make all other email systems obsolete (Natural Selection at work).

Apache: This web server began life as a series of patches to the NCSA web server, thereby earning the reputation as "a patchy" server. Apache is a clever evolution (pun intended) of the term.

Free software developers have historically had a knack for clever names which a lot of people don't research enough to understand. But that doesn't stop them from bitching, obviously.

I fail to see how clever naming which escapes your grasp (even assuming that the names were bad) has any relevance to the fanciful notion that OSS developers have a "general lock of concern for making useable software." If you want to be a snob, that's you're business. But don't disparage the people who are gracious enough to provide you will free and Free software, much of which comes from great personal effort.

If you think that the effort to learn how to use a tool is too great, you have several options:

1) Suggest to the author how it can be better. Free software authors always welcome useful feedback, and may use your suggestion(s). Pay the author for his time, and I'm sure you'll get a great response. If you're just in it because you don't want to pay for software, then stop whining.

2) Pay someone to make your changes. Free software gives you complete freedom to do this. If you're just in it because you don't want to pay for software, then stop whining.

3) Buy a commercial alternative that perfectly meets your requirement for a simple name. Does it work? Great! If you're just in it because you don't want to pay for software, then stop whining.

4) Learn to program and make the changes yourself. Not worth your time? Review the above options.

You brought to mind an odd scenerio that plays out like this (you're "Whiner" by the way):

Whiner: I'm sooo hungry. Somebody please feed me. I have such a craving for a little meat.

Good Samaritan: Here's some steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, and an extra bottle of cola. My neighbors and I have spent the last several years building a self-sufficient food-production system. We've had to work hard to find alternatives to common production methods and certain many common ingredients in order to avoid legal problems, so this isn't perfect, but it is very healthy and rather tasty. You're welcome to take all you can carry. We'll even show you how you can make your own self-sufficient food production system so you'll never go hungry again.

Whiner (punching good samaritan repeatedly): You bitch! I want a little meat, and I want it now! I didn't ask for side items, and I certainly don't want to know how to be self-sufficient! Just give me what I want, when I want it, and shut your trap!

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[MoneyT]

You'd be suprised about the left and right click business. It's not so much a matter of no tknowing their left from their right, but a matter of adding that into the thought process in getting the computer to do what they want. Ever watch unskilled computer users try to get things done? It takes them forever and a day to do some of the simplest tasks. It's not because they're dumb, but it's because for them, the computer is not a natural environment. To us, icons, buttons, tabs, controls, mice, all these things are natural to us, they make sense because we have used them for so long. But to everyone else, they have to sit there and plan out all the steps they need to take to do something. It just isn't natural for them.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[spectecjr]

Don't get me started on double-clicking -- one of the stupidest GUI design decisions in Microsoft's less-than-illustrious career. I can't count the number of users I've worked with who just can't -- for whatever reason -- complete a double-click.

Apple invented (or perhaps stole from Xerox):
The single click - to position the caret.
The double click - to select a word.
The triple click - to select a paragraph.

If you think double clicking's bad, then triple clicking must be demonic, right?

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[reallocate]

>> You move the mouse up, and the arrow goes up. You press the left mouse button and it does it's normal thing. You press the right mouse button and it does something special.

This is not intuitive. There is no way to know that the thing called a mouse has anything to do with the arrow on the screen until someone explains the connection betwen the two seemingly disconnected pieces.

Years ago, I had a chance to introduce computers to a group of people who, while literate and educated by their community's standards, ignored both the mouse and the mouse cursor until someone noticed and explained things. While using a word processor, they continued to attempt to type one page at a time, as on a typewriter.

That sort of behavior has nothing at all to do with someone's intelligence or skill level. It has everything to do with bad assumptions made by developers, interface designers, and marketers.

Making something intutively easy to use does not dumb it down. Granted, there's a lot of dumbing down that poses as UI design these days, but it doesn't need to be that way. All the capabilities of a computer should be available from a well-designed and easy to use interface.

Your last graf seems to imply that only techies have a right to use computers as tools, that mere users can only use them as playthings. I can't begin to tell you how much I disagree with that, or the notion that techies are some sort of elite priesthood ordained with the wisdom to do what others cannot.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[harlows_monkeys]

Double clicking goes back to at least Apple. It was in the original Mac in 1984.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Kaiwen]

Try your reply again. If you can do it without the ad hominems we'll talk. Otherwise, I'm not interested.

Lee Kaiwen
Taiwan, ROC

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[evilviper]

you open an item using the File>>Open menu item

Great... But still, Windows has the same functionality... On Windows, File/Open would work in folders, and on the desktop you COULD just single click, then hit Enter. So, there goes your "point" spiraling down the drain.

there is nothing called a "file manager" on the Mac.

No really? Last time I checked, NO OPERATING SYSTEM has a piece of software called the "file-manager"... In Windows it's called 'explorer', and on Unix systems, there are dazens of names for them... But since they all manage files, they are indeed 'file-managers'.

But, I suspect you were just desperate to put some rebuttle out there, so you wern't too concerned about those nasty litte facts.

there is also no way in the standard MacOS to change the double-click behavior in the Finder. That would be absolutely insane from a usability standpoint.

Well, I don't recall the name, but one view option gives you nice little triangles next to the files that you just single-click to expand the contents of that folder. Doesn't seem too "insane" to me, and Microsoft thought it was so "insane" that they put it in Windows, KDE put it in their "file-manager", etc.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[evilviper]

evilviper's original point was that Apple somehow requires a double-click to perform an action

Why thank you for clarifying what you believe I was thing. But alas, my point was that apple didn't invent something, that other OSes did not have. The original poster implied that this was something special that Apple did right, and Microsoft did wrong. And I quote:

"double-clicking -- one of the stupidest GUI design decisions in Microsoft's less-than-illustrious career."

"Apple got at least this much right -- give them one button, and don't make them push it more than once. "

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Kaiwen]

All she has to do is memorize ... a random sequence of ten or eleven numbers.

Not at all. That's why they invented phone books, directory assistance and one-touch dialing. Memorizing is a convenience, not a necessity.

As to the rest of your post, touching numbers on a phone keypad is certainly more intuitive than using a mouse (see previous discussions on this point), and is accomplished with relative ease by a far greater number of people than mouse movements. Second, my phone has a backspace key, doesn't yours?

Lee Kaiwen
Taiwan, ROC

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[ealar dlanvuli]

I'll start by saying things like unix *must* exist for the people who live in computers, no matter how "easy" all the other interfaces are.

One cannot compare the productivity of a unix wiz to anything in a current GUI, it's just not a comparison. Someday there might be GUI that is flexible enough and easy enough to manipulate that it can replace the CLI, but that will be quite a ways. Remember your dealing with 100+ diffrent input types, and 10 input points when you use a keyboard instead of a mouse. A mouse is capable of one selection and at most 5 inputs, that is horrible in comparison.

I would like to point out we still read (sorry couldn't think of better example) instead of watching movies, when movies are obviously the "easier" interface.

As for touch screens, they are a very nasty input device if the screen is also the display. I am never productive with one (YMMV). I personally think the future input device will be a combination of the keyboard-mouse in one that was posted a few days ago. It obviously has several iterations left, but my main complaint about current interfaces is they often require you to do one of the following:

1: limit your actions and use a mouse
2: not limit your actions, but double your time by using a mouse
3: speed yourself up significantly by using a few keyboard shortcuts, but hit a major speed bump when you have to move back into "mouse" mode
4: use all keyboard shortcuts (requires alot of effort to learn all keystrokes) and avoid mouse completly

If the transition between keyboard and mouse became cheaper, todays interfaces would be alot better off. Perhaps it won't be as easy for someone who has never seen a computer before, but I'm almost positive everyone is capable of understanding the "cursor" metaphor by now (if not it's a very easy one to explain).

The two mouse button (and a WHEEL?!?) problem is something that is hard for novice users though, I actually find the "right click - left click" interface ackward at moments, and I've been using computers since 1981!

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[ealar dlanvuli]

How about visual basic? Click to select a control, drag to move it. Oops, looks like you did that too fast: it got counted as a double-click, and now you've opened a code-editing window.

oh god, I HATE this. They really should make it a triple click or something, or cause the first mouse click to not count for the double click, ANYTHING.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[evilviper]

When you think of something... let us all know.

Nothing more could have been done to prevent S11?

[Woko]

It's hard enough to take his comments about a tyrant producing the best design, but to say that better design could not have at least delayed the collapse of the towers, allowing hundreds more to escape is plain wrong.

Better fireproofing on the steel beams, or even if the rumours are true, absestos fireproofing above the 64th floor could have prevented many deaths.

Uhhh

[mav[LAG]]

Is there anything that could have been done in design terms to stop 11 September from happening?

I don't think so. As far as I can tell, no mistakes were made. There were no practices in place that weren't followed.

He's joking right? It's kind of hard to tell from the context whether he's talking about facial recognition and 9/11, or just design in general and 9/11, but I for one am in the camp that says there was a massive failure to follow best practices by many of the US authorities before and during 9/11.

Re:Uhhh

[Bios_Hakr]

It's pretty hard to stop someone once they have made up their mind to do something like September 11. If we had better airport security, they'd have done something else like rent a private plane, or even buy their own 747.

When you have enough money, nothing is impossible.

Re:Uhhh

[jimfrost]

Actually there was no breakdown on September 11. The tools they used to take over the plane were allowed at the time, and really aren't that big of a threat anyway. If the box cutters had been found by security they would have allowed them to pass. Security was interested in massively destructive weapons (explosives, guns) because those were what were considered to be threats, and no such weapons made it through security on September 11.

What the hijackers did that was special was take advantage of the psychology that had been drilled into airline passengers over decades, namely that if there's a hijacking you stay put and let it play itself out. That allowed a small number of hijackers to control a large number of people using primitive weapons that otherwise would not have been much of a threat.

This worked in the past because previously hijackers weren't committing suicide, and live passengers were to their benefit. The September 11 hijackers were playing by different rules.

In being successful at it they changed the psychology of airline passengers. We will not see another September 11 because the passengers will no longer sit around and let hijackers have their way. In fact, the technique didn't even last out the day ... as proven by the crash of the flight in Pennsylvania, and later by the shoe bomber. We could use exactly the same security procedures we used, with the same effectiveness, as before September 11 and such an attack would not succeed today.

It's easy to blame the airline security people, but this was really an exploitation of mass psychology ... a social engineering hack if you will.

Re:Uhhh

[mav[LAG]]

I'm not talking about the determination of the hijackers, I'm talking about the - let me say it again - massive failure by many US authorities to follow best practices before and after the event. For examples before, just search Time Magazine for "whistle blower" and "FBI". For examples on the day, here is a good start.

Eg. Newton versus Palm

[cwernli]

One of the best examples to explain "usability" is the comparison of the Newton and Palm "graffitis": whilst Newton required the machine to learn from the user, the Palm handled it the other way round.

Not surprisingly man is better at learning stuff than a machine - therefore even grandmothers can cope with the Palm input method after ten minutes, whilst a lot of experienced users simply gave it up with the Newton.

Re:Eg. Newton versus Palm

[g4dget]

This is just precious: you consider forcing users to learn chicken scratches good design? The original Palms didn't even have a reference card. I don't know what kind of grandmother you have, but mine doesn't have the patience--she's too smart.

Graffiti was a fluke and an example of lousy design. They should have put a keyboard on those devices from the start, and not surprisingly, that's what everybody is moving to.

WTC lessons -- what to look for in your building

[oakwood]

Q: "Is there anything that could have been done in design terms to stop 11 September from happening?"
A: "I don't think so. As far as I can tell, no mistakes were made."

How about 110-story buildings with three stairwells each?

Only one of the three stairwells was wide enough to allow firefighters to go up during an evacuation. How do you fight an ordinary fire in such a building?

According to USA Today, "Nearly everyone who could get out did get out." But the buildings were only half-full. "That took pressure off the stairwells."

At any rate, there are lessons for anyone who works in a tall building from this article:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001 /12/19/usa tcov-wtcsurvival.htm

"The World Trade Center had an excellent stair system, much better than required by building codes --- both when it was built 30 years ago and now. Each tower had three stairwells. New York City building codes require two."

"Stairways A and C, on opposite sides of the building's core, were 44 inches wide. In the center, Stairway B was 56 inches wide."

"The bigger the stairway, the faster an evacuation can proceed. In 44-inch stairways, a person must turn sideways to let another pass -- for example, a rescuer heading up. In a 56-inch stairway, two people can pass comfortably."

"The World Trade Center stairwells allowed thousands to get out despite panic and smoke." ...

"On Feb. 26, 1993, terrorists exploded a bomb in a parking garage under the north tower. Six people died. The evacuation took nearly four hours in dark, smoky, poorly marked stairwells. Some people were stuck in elevators for 10 hours. The Port Authority made crucial improvements after that attack. The changes saved countless lives on Sept. 11."

"The Port Authority put reflective paint on stairs, railings and stairwell doors. It added bright arrows to guide people along corridors to stairway connections. It installed loudspeakers so building managers could talk to people in their offices as well as in hallways. It gave every disabled person an evacuation chair that would let two husky men carry them down stairs. One evacuation chair was used to carry a man down from the 67th floor."

"In the 1993 attack, the explosion knocked out the main power source, its backup and the fire-control command post. The Port Authority added a second source of power for safety equipment, such as fire alarms, emergency lighting and intercoms. It built two duplicate fire command posts, one in each tower. The Port Authority also put batteries in stairwell lights so a power failure wouldn't blacken the escape route. Overall, the improvements cost more than $90 million. Sprinklers, added before 1993, helped suppress fires."

"Most important, building management took evacuations seriously. Evacuation drills were held every six months, sometimes to the irritation or amusement of occupants. Each floor had "fire wardens," sometimes high-ranking executives of a tenant, and they were responsible for organizing an evacuation on their floors."

That article is a good checklist for anyone who works in a multi-story building.

The "intuitive" grail...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be of a similiar mind as this man and have become less so as I've progressed as an engineer. Is it that I've drunk the Kool-Aid and now want to go around making users live's hell? Somehow I doubt it. Instead I've come to understand that an "intuitive" interface is a false Holy Grail.

For one the only things that can be made "intuitive" are those that humans can do "out of the box" (i.e. ape-like behaviors). Sure a Segway has the most intuitive interface imaginable by exploiting the way our will effects our balance, but what if the Segway could fly? Suddenly the Segway's neat biofeedback trick would fail simply because there is no natural in-born parrallel. The office doors alluded to in the begining of the article can't ever be intutive because a door is an unnatural construction. Beyond that in case "ease-of-use" gurus haven't noticed men cannot unaided, fly, communicate over distances of thousands of miles, travel faster than 15mph, or harness nuclear energy.

Two, an interface being "intuitive" is an incredibly cheap, short term win. Wow! You can drag and drop, congratulations. Now move a thousand bitmaps... hmmm bet you wish you'd spent the twenty extra minutes it'd take to learn "cp *.bmp" and the other console commands. The above sounds like an elitist comment but is it elitist to want your average person to learn to read? To drive? The average user spends hundreds if not thousands of times more effort and time learning those skills.

All of this is not to say I'm for dismissing contemplative interface design, I think ergonomics and efficiency should always be a design goal. I'm just against the tone of most of the UI people and some of there most common assumptions.

Re:The "intuitive" grail...

[orkysoft]

Yes, and:

SUBTRACT A FROM B GIVING C.

Which is COBOL, btw. A language universally horrified.

Re:The "intuitive" grail...

[JaredOfEuropa]

I agree with you, except...

Two, an interface being "intuitive" is an incredibly cheap, short term win. Wow! You can drag and drop, congratulations. Now move a thousand bitmaps... hmmm bet you wish you'd spent the twenty extra minutes it'd take to learn "cp *.bmp" and the other console commands. The above sounds like an elitist comment but is it elitist to want your average person to learn to read? To drive? The average user spends hundreds if not thousands of times more effort and time learning those skills.

Learning to use something as complex as a computer presents a huge steep learning curve to non-technical people. If the system has both an intuitive and a commandline interface, the new user will have a lot less hurdles to overcome to even begin using the system, as it makes the system a lot less daunting. Explaining drag and drop to my grandmother takes 5 minutes and she understands the concept perfectly. The Copy command and the command line have a lot more scope for errors, so I leave that until she actually has a need to move 1000 files.

I still don't get where that idea comes from

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Isn't there a tyrant in every OSS project? I mean, Linus is the king of Linux, he just happens to listen to the parliament a good deal. Someone has to initiate a project, and you're free to fork if you don't like it.

Feels like another misconception to file next to "Open Source doesn't make money!"

Re:I still don't get where that idea comes from

[leandrod]

> Isn't there a tyrant in every OSS project?

No. Apache, GNU/Hurd, Gnome are just some examples of free software projects owned, developed and maintained by committees.

The tyrant vs committee thing is just a thoughtless, misinformation propaganda sound bite. The real points are:

Trade-offs. MS-W32 useability was traded-off against security and freedom, Mac OS X user-friendliness was traded off agains popularity and freedom. This are trade-offs that should never have been made. It would be better to have less popular and less friendly software, granted it was fundamentally sound. This would have allowed for building better user interfaces in due time.

End-user focus. The Linux kernel, the Apache server, and many other projects simply have no business with the naïve end-user who wants a Graphical User Interface. This is a business for Gnome, GNUStep, KDE, Motif and the like of them.

Re:I still don't get where that idea comes from

[leandrod]

> Intolerant of other viewpoints.

In an age of Relativism, every conviction solidly sustained gets called intolerance. But name calling doesn't make reality.

> Desire to shape the world into his own vision.

That is what being a leader, or simply a man of opinions and ideals, means.

Donald, you make no sense.

[jukal]

Yoy say:
1) But over the years, I moved more and more towards the study of cognition, and how people do things, and the errors and accidents that people make.

2) On the other hand you say: You don't do good software design by committee. You do it best by having a dictator. From the user's point of view, you must have a coherent design philosophy, and I don't see how that could come about from open source software.

Which logic led you from the 1) to 2) - the fact that you believe that one clever mind makes the best design - do you mean like Hitle, Mussolini or Stalin ? It would seem more logical to go into the conclusion that a larger open mass evolves and fixes problems, instead of getting stuck into one fixed way of thinking. Also, why on earth do you mix coherent design philosophy and open source? Make a soup one day. You design the soup, not the carrots.

Re:Donald, you make no sense.

[Planesdragon]

Which logic led you from the 1) to 2) - the fact that you believe that one clever mind makes the best design - do you mean like Hitle, Mussolini or Stalin ? It would seem more logical to go into the conclusion that a larger open mass evolves and fixes problems, instead of getting stuck into one fixed way of thinking.

Creating something new takes one person. Greatness comes from single-minded authoirty reaching for the stars. Single people (or the rare closely knit small group) are ideal for this.

Committees, on the other hand, are great for catching mistakes and keeping horrible errors (Hitler/Mussolini/Stalin) from happening.

In OSS, we've got the committee in the form of the userbase / hobbyist coder. What a successful project needs is a dictator, to get the impressive ideas down.

Re:Donald, you make no sense.

[jukal]

heh, I think you put it better:

In OSS, we've got the committee in the form of the userbase / hobbyist coder. What a successful project needs is a dictator, to get the impressive ideas down.

Than me :

Also, why on earth do you mix coherent design philosophy and open source? Make a soup one day. You design the soup, not the carrots.

learn to think

[autopr0n]

Sure, but which icon do you click? "The light orange-green one with a picture of a letter and a clock" What if there are 50 icons on the screen?

My mom is a total techno neophite. Dispite that, she found it easier to dail in and use a unix terminal to check her email because she only had to remember a few things to type in, while using a GUI required remembering lots of pictures and screen locations to click on. In general a lot more steps.

You're instructions really only help people who only have on icon on their screen.



Don't believe me? Go ahead. Try to use AOL to find copies of the Anarchist's cookbook without using the unspecified and user-unfriendly "Web".

What does that have to do with user-friendlyness? If AOL stood for Anarchy Online, I'm sure it would be pretty easy to find the anarchist cookbook.

Btw, it's been several years since I used AOL (back when 2400baud to AOL was the only way to get online in Ames, IA) But at the time AOL would default to a general web search when there were no keywords, and the pages would show up in AOLs thing. So typing "Anarchists cookbook" in AOL today would probably bring it up, unless you had turned on parental controls.

Even then, the scope of an information store has nothing to do with the userfrendlyness or flexibility of the interface to that information store.

Re:learn to think

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that although the GUI was a brilliant invention back when the problem was "How do we create a computer that can be used and understood by people?"; the GUI took a common situation (The workplace) and put it on a computer. Look, instant metaphor!

The problem we have now, though, is that the metaphor has become the reality, and it isn't a metaphor any more. Keep documents in a filling cabinet? Thats like saving a file to the network drive. People don't think in terms of the metaphor any more, they think in terms of the computer.

So theres the problem (As I see it). Computer designers no longer have a metaphor to base their designs on. Its self referential (Where do you place a file if you want to keep it? Uh, on the file server. Darn!).

What we need now is a way to go beyond metaphors. Yeah, should be easy....

dictator? how about a triumvirate

[stdarg]

I've always thought the design process goes more smoothly when you have a small close-knit team. Having one person acting as a dictator can be good if he knows everything, but in practice the added knowledge a 2nd and maybe 3rd person bring to the table can outweigh the increase in bureaucracy.

"Why can't it just do what I want it to do?"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why can't it just do what I want it to do?"

The same reason why you have to tell your dog to "sit" in order to get it to sit, instead of the dog "just doing what you want it to do".

The same reason apples need to be detached from trees.

The same reason you have to turn on most faucets for them to give you water, open refridgerator doors to get at the cold items, turn knobs to open the doors in your house, turn keys to start your car, etc.: machines are reactive, not proactive.

Even automatic doors in supermarkets or airports, or the water faucets in some airports or movie theater bathrooms, are reactive: you have to intetionally trigger a sensor, if you intend to get a result. If you don't trigger the sensor, you don't get the reaction that results only from triggering the sensor.

You have to communicate your desires, if you want to stand any chance of having them fulfilled.

-- Terry

Re:"Why can't it just do what I want it to do?"

[Pogue Mahone]

...turn knobs to open the doors in your house...

And on the subject of doorknobs - anyone who has ever tried to open a door with both arms full of sleeping toddler, or who has arthritis and cannot grip very well, will tell you all about the usability of the doorknobs that Mr. Norman seems to advocate over the "british" door handle that he always seems to catch his sleeves on.

Re:"Why can't it just do what I want it to do?"

[plastik55]

He has a point in that the old style of door lever is annoyingly easy to catch your sleeve, or the strap of your bag, or your hip (ouch!) on. But he could have made a better point by noting that the modern style of door lever curves back towards the door at the end, solving all of those problems while remaining equally accessible.

Interesting read until I hit this...

[CreamsicleSeventeen]

"Is there anything that could have been done in design terms to stop 11 September from happening?"

What the fuck? Just who the hell decided that question could be pertinent to anything? Less "intuitive" airplane controls? Velcro instead of shoelaces for FBI agents? Is there nothing in our culture that can't be profaned in the media? What's next for New Scientist? How the internet could have saved Princess Di?

Tyranny of the stupid

[Beautyon]

I don't see how that could come about from open source software

I cant imagine it, so it cannot be done. Riiight.

Design by comitee, by definition, should work better than design by a dictator because it will satisfy the problems that many people percieve, and not just the solve the pet peeves of a single deranged man.

The problem so far has been that the interface designers have a total understanding of the systems that they are trying to interface to people that have zero understanding. What is needed are many, many, focus group sessions to create an OSS interface guidlines document that everyone can refer to (or not) when they build thier applications. Arent Gnome doing something approaching this?

What has been lacking so far is the will to adress this problem. If it were suddenly to become the central focus, OSS would more than likely leap past the other solutions, because it can freely experiment with the tools, test with hundreds of thousands of volunteers until something really usable, in the broadest sense, is created.

Re:Tyranny of the stupid

[Beautyon]

...Perhaps this model, of appointing a key developer as dictator for one release cycle might gain some of the best features of both.

Thats a brilliant idea; whats important is that it is possible to have good usability in OSS software. At least we can try this way of working - this is what is so important.

Re:Tyranny of the stupid

[Tim Browse]

I don't see how that could come about from open source software

I cant imagine it, so it cannot be done. Riiight.

I've already seen someone invoke Godwin's Law in this discussion (impressive), but I'll just invoke Clarke's 1st Law:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Tim

Re:Tyranny of the stupid

[Beautyon]

as a reaction to the designed-by-committee state of Mozilla's U

I dont know about anyone else, but I have found the Mozilla interface to be the very definition of easy to use. Everything in it makes sense, and is usable by both me, and my 70 year old Aunt, who took to it like a duck to water.

Anyway, wasnt Chimera created only because Mozilla doesnt look like an OSX application, and not because Mozilla is unusable?

I'm unimpressed and have suspicions.

[twitter]

In this article he says, " I never look back at the stuff I've done. I look forward to where I'm going," and then tells us what an idiot he is. He berates his own shallow research and how much he screwed up his last book. Right now, I think he needs some more research.

Posting from Mozilla on Window Maker on Debian, I have to say that his user interface comments are way off the mark. Free Software is free to combine the best interfaces with the best answer to any particular problem. Sure, that makes for some inconsitency as the right tool for the job is never a universal. Just the same I've gotten used to the particular interfaces I like and now think of them as far easier than the M$ junk I use at work and even Apple stuff. If he wants to be the tyrant of an interface, he's welcome to make one or even to simply make some constructive comments. Oh wait, I see, he and the people he works for consider such stuff "intellectual property" that can be owned so that best practices never go very far.

His website would benifit from a more modular approach. Everything is thrown out in one big long scroll down page. Stuff like his background should be a link to two kilobytes of text with links instead of a too short to be useful with no links paragraph. Recent articles and publications should also be links. The sidebar is full and distracting rather than informative and useful. Why would I take this man's opinion about software design seriously when his site so clearly misses the pull nature of html? Oh wait, now I see, he thinks of his web page as an advertisment rather than a means of sharing information.

I'm starting to see a patern and it's name is greed. The things he bemoans are the direct result of his own way of thinking. The only thing he gets right in the article is that many cheap gadgets have poor interfaces. Who is not sick of having to read a manual to learn how to use yet another black box that is a toaster or microwave oven? This has little to do with software design and his mixing the two up is the result of ignorance or malice. His ingorance of the world of free software is less than forgivable from a design expert. His disparagement of software licenses that give the user the ability to run software for any purpose, modify that software as the user pleases and share those modifications, is likewise the result of unforgivable ignorance or malice. Take the blinders off, Don, you might like what you see.

this is a dead end

[g4dget]

Norman rightfully complains about the poor usability of current systems. He diagnoses a lot of microscopic problems and admonishes companies to spend more time on fixing their products. But that's no real solutions: companies don't have the time or money.

Just look at the stuff coming out of Apple (where Norman used to work): sure, Aqua is a little nicer than Windows and has somewhat fewer blunders, but, believe me, it's not intuitive to the uninitiated.

The problem is that making usable programs is too much work and is too rigid and centralized a process. That's a technological problem, not an HCI problem, and until it is addressed, HCI design of the kind Norman prescribes is just like flailing in the water: it may keep you alive for a little while, but it is enormously exhausting and largely ineffective.

The future as we knew it.

[technix4beos]

But in fact emotions came first precisely because they are all about survival. Modern computers are pretty autonomous and run 24/7, performing a lot of tasks. With machines this powerful, survival is important, so putting emotions in the machine makes a lot of sense.

This reminds me so much of the realities shown in Star Trek: Generations, and Terminator 2.

What happens when the machines we build become afraid of us pulling their plug, and become so upset that they decide to take preventive action?

Emotions are good. In humans.

Emotional behaviour is good in a computer, to a degree, but I have to disagree with Donald, and state that it would be a Bad Thing if our computers started to act childishly, and used their vast resources to lash out.

Anyone remember what happened in A.I. ?

And no, I don't live only in movies, and sci-fi. I just happen to think that a lot of the realities shown in these mediums may indeed come to light one day.

Door Handles?!

[the bluebrain]

From the article:

• But in Cambridge I became so frustrated with British water taps and switches and door handles - those awful sideways handles on many British doors that catch your sleeves

Everything else aside, including the silly taps often found in the UK: round door handles ....

I figure that any way to implement a user interface requires thought, many many decisions, and yes, chucking a lot of stuff out. In the end there is one, maybe two ways to do something, which should be "intuitive", based upon what the designer figures the user's background is. However, this also implies that there are tons of ways the user can't do something (obviously), and (not so obviously) a bunch of stuff which can't be done at all - or rather, combinations of things.
But now to the case in point:

In the UK (and most of Europe), I simply can't "slide" by a door without running the risk of getting my sleeve caught. This is quite true. People get by this "bug" by habitually opening the door just a little bit further than absolutely necessary.
In the US, however ... (this is where I start telling a story) I'm sitting in the dining room and realize that there's nothing to drink on the table. I improvise a poll as to what Anne, Bob, and Carla want to drink, go into the kitchen, and fill four glasses with beverages-of-choice. I grab the glasses (two in each hand - assume that the glasses are well-designed enough to allow this mode of interaction - perhaps they even have handles), turn around, and am confronted with a closed kitchen door - either because a draught slammed it, or it's spring-loaded (to avoid having kitchen smells wafting throughout the house). I extend my hand, already containing two glasses, toward the handle, and ... aaaaargh! Elbows, man, these yanks need some fusking door handles that can be operated with an elbow!

[end rant] - 'course, this would never happen to a USian, because they would unconsciously take it into account before even grabbing the glasses.

sigh. (Same rant goes for separate "cold" and "hot" faucets in the UK. Anyone want to suggest implementing a separate "warm" facet between the two? :)

(Karma is here to be used). More on-topic: one thing I was missing in this interview was the fact ("postulate"?) that in any user-interaction-system, the human is by far the most flexible, adaptable element. History is littered with atrocious design decisions, which don't even make it into the consciousness of user's minds anymore, because the users have learned to use them, and have got completely used to them. For instance:

• Does anyone else remember the first couple of minutes of using a steering wheel in a car, after several years of riding a bicycle? I, for one, remember steering a bicycle to be intuitive, but having to consciously learn how far to turn the wheel of a car in order to make it turn at the desired raduius
• Computer mouse, as discussed further up in the thread. Here, just watch an uninitiated user, the first time they use it. It's only simple once you've got used to it
• Rotary phones. These have been superceded by touch-tones, and it was a mechanically elegant design at the time they were invented - but the UI still sucks
• Basically anything you had to learn how to use, rather than: if you know what it can do, it is obvious how to make it do it. Old MS interfaces, rather a lot of today's open source interfaces, some old tape decks (hold down "record" and "play" at the same time to make it record), keyboards (who wouldn't prefer a really good voice interface?), and so on ...

My point is merely that considering the above, I have as much appreciation for good UI design as the next person, but that humans were practically "built" to be able to handle a wide range of "UIs", and if what a device does sucks, then no amount of UI-candy with "un-suck" it. A bit like music: I'm happy to allow other people to make it, I appreciate it immensly, but it the artist has nothing to say, then no good voice, good producer, or ultimate fidelity will make up for that.

Re:Door Handles?!

[TeknoHog]

Unfortunately, the brilliant British logic of water taps does not extend to showers. It would be great to have separate hot and cold showers :-).

Re:Door Handles?!

[Mr.Sharpy]

The door handles comment was really kind of shallow on his part. He fails to recognize that in reality, for some people, round door handles are impossible to use. Take for instance people with arthritis or other disabilities that result in reduced grip. Grasping a door knob to turn it can be painful at best, assuming it is possible at all.

This sort of oversight really shows the downfall of usability design dictated by a single person. That which is easy and convenient for one person, may be impossible or painful for another. A single person controlling design and function may be effecient, but that does not necessarily translate to better. It can also lead to insensitivity to the needs of those who do not conform to the ideal user the lead person has in mind.

Oh come on!

[SerpentMage]

The Windows metaphor is actually not bad. I learned it and moved on. My brother 11 years my junior (23) learned it in about ten minutes. He never complained once.

The problem is that we are in a transition similar to when horse and buggies went out of fashion for cars. Those used to the old way have no idea what to do with the new. So do you blame the car makers? No people have to learn and move on.

And about my grandmother learning? Guess what my mother who is approaching 60 has learned it. My inlaws who are in their sixties have learned it. It might have taken them a bit longer, but they got it and moved on.

Like when people had to learn VCR's, remote control's, radio, and other technology in general, people learn it and move on. Actually if you want to make the point, what about those people that rode on horses instead of walking? I beat that was a shock of a life time for some cave people.

Re:Oh come on!

[Kaiwen]

Guess what my mother who is approaching 60 has learned it.

If we're going to toss out anecdotals, my mother, who has a Master's degree, is completely befuddled by computers, and is constantly forgetting when to double- and when to single-click. When I design interfaces, I design them with her in mind.

But, then, anecdotals prove nothing.

Lee Kaiwen
Taiwan, ROC

Let users control font size

[sambo99]

I guess New Scientist have not been listening to Neilsen...

Let users control font size :(

Re:Let users control font size

[spectecjr]

I guess New Scientist have not been listening to Neilsen...

Let users control font size [useit.com] :(

New Scientist has amazing control over font size. You can hold it near to your face, or at arm's length. You can even use a magnifying glass if you wish. You can even read it in the bath if you want.

Re:Nothing more could have been done to prevent S1

[Gerry Gleason]

What all of this points to is that the issues are considerable more complex than any one or two sentence statement can do justice to. I watched the PBS program on the engineering of the towers, and the conclusion is that the design could have been better. You can't lay it all on the original engineering, but there were some big oversights. I have a lot of trouble with the fact that the central core and exit stairs did not have a reinforced concrete barrier. The fireproofing on the steel also needs to be looked at. We know they thought about airplane impact, at least from an accident standpoint even if they didn't predict that airplanes might be larger in the future. The fact that the fireproofing could be blown off in a impact was a risk that could have been considered, and should be for future designs. This is probably a solvable problem.

The real failures were essentially management failures that marginalized warnings, and inter-agency rivalries. I for one would feel a lot better if somebody would step up and say "we could have done better, we're sorry". It's just shameful what passes for leadership these days.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> Unfortunately you are too close to the problem to recognize that you are a part of the problem.

Or perhaps I know something you don't...

> Most people want to simply get their work done, NOW, and not in "due time" as you so casually put it.

The thing is, there isn't a thing that can't be done, *now*, in free software. Most people use their computers as very expensive, error prone typewriters-cum-calculators. On the contrary, in the corporation X Terminals can do everything PCs can, at lower cost, better security, less failures.

Now if you are talking computers at home, it still holds. Even the proprietary software companies could have systems almost as capable as today's, but with far less security and reliability problems. Just that they got a severe case of Featuritis and wasted years of POSIX work by creating their own, proprietary APIs and stuff.

The rest of you reply is so misinformed as to be useless, not meriting even refutation. But here it goes: GNU/Hurd is an experiment that lost its urgency when BSD and GNU/Linux got released as free software. Apache is not unuseable, it is just that some modules outside of the core are still being tested. Gnome 1.4 is bad, but 2 is not related to Red Hat's nullified version. It is the result of hard work by Red Hat, plus Sun, plus Ximian, plus the community.

> When I go to work everyday I don't see one user bitching about how the software they use is not "free".

Because they were not educated in freedom. Neither in freedom nor in costs, security and reliability.

> If I were to replace the software we use with open source everything however I'm pretty sure I'd get an earful on why doesn't anything "WORK" anymore.

And that would be just lack of familiarity. Just how the transition from Mac OS 9 to X ruffled quite a few feathers, and from MS-DOS to MS-W16 and from MS-W13 to MS-W32, and from there to MS-WNT.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[NDPTAL85]

Educated in freedom? Do I have to remind you what that sounds like? Leftist communist revolutionaries used to say the same exact things about the pampered and comfortable capitalist middle classes. Is this a cultural revolution we're talking about here or everyday computing usage?

I don't know how you can say that XTerms can do "everything" a PC can. Sure if you don't mind slow load times, less software availability and single points of failure. In my company could you find us a XTerm version of the real estate software that we run on client PC's individually? I don't think so.

There's a TON of things that can't be done NOW in free software. Sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Not true, not true, not true" everytime this is mentioned helps no one, especially not you. VMWare does NOT work for everything and for the things that don't need VMWare they aren't equivalents.

It does not matter if most people " as very expensive, error prone typewriters-cum-calculators.". Those overgrown typewritters are, when running Windows, able to run all the software you could ever possibly need. Freedom? What good is freedom on Linux when you don't have the rest of the software you need? I run Linux at home on one of my machines but for my job in real estate it is absolutely useless. Now I know my industry isn't the only industry in the world but it is one. And it certainly refutes your statement that anything a PC can do, open source can do as well. Educated in freedom. Thats a good one. So what am I supposed to do after I put on my soldiers uniform, march my co-workers into "re-education camps", give them open source software and they STILL ask me why the stuff doesn't "WORK RIGHT NOW"? Should my response each time they ask be, "In due time, at least now you have freedom!"?

I guess I really should have known that you as a Debian user and or coder would approach this issue from a political point of view instead of a common sensical and practical usage one. I had thought you might have been able to rise above it however.

Spot on. User interfaces for physical things...

[alienmole]

...are very different than user interfaces for software. Maybe in the future, when we can wave our hands around in the air like Tom Cruise in "Minority Report" (or the shuttle pilots in Earth Final Conflict), we'll have more intuitive user interfaces.

But right now, among other things, most developers are simply limited by the fact that we have incredibly low-resolution displays (relative e.g. to paper), very limited and limiting input devices (keyboard and mouse), very limited software support for advanced user interface strategies, and low media bandwidth (e.g. even gigabit LANs have trouble dealing with many simultaneous video streams). We're still using menu access techniques that had their beginnings on text consoles (the pull-down menu), and only lately have some innovative alternatives begun to take root (e.g. piemenus).

If the devices we were controlling were simply VCRs and the like, Norman might have a point. But what we're actually doing is developing "physical" interfaces to abstract intellectual concepts that don't always have obvious analogs in the real world. It's hardly surprising that one of the most effective interfaces is textual.

Historically, text and written or spoken language has undoubtedly been the most effective way of communicating abstract concepts. Pictures are used as an aid to understanding, at best, an adjunct to written and spoken language. So why do we try to provide completely pictoral interfaces to our software? It does everyone a disservice, and effectively forces users to be dumb, disempowering them by hiding or eliminating (*cough*Windows*cough*) their ability to use language skills to control their environment.

(For anyone who disagrees with what I'm saying, please translate the above message into pictures and sign language and email me the results.)

Why is it all Interesting and Informative?

[marko123]

Has there been a moratorium on Funny comments in this thread, or are UI design tradeoffs inherently boring?

Re:Emotions?

[bcrowell]

Even worse:

[The computer] should look at the tasks it's about to do, and if they're time-critical or important, it should send them to another computer. For example, you're about to start payroll computation so you ask: "Are you feeling good?" The system might say: "No, I've noticed a few memory errors." So emotions will be used to help machines survive, not to mimic human beings or try to make people feel good.

Systems like this (fuzzy logic VCRs, etc.) are really annoying. For usability, it's important for the machine's behavior to be predictable. If I'm about to sit down and do some word processing, I don't want to have to worry whether the computer is in a bad mood today.

In his example, if the computer's having memory errors, it should give an informative error message and refuse to boot. This has nothing to do with emotions.

Yes.

[Chris Burke]

If automakers had the same attitude you , we'd all still be driving stick shifts

Not exactly a good example, from the standpoint of supporting your point.

There are schools you attend to learn how to drive. Most of it is learning the law, but a not insubstantial portion of it is simply learning how to operate the vehicle. It takes time and effort to learn to drive, and the automatic transmission did not fundamentally change that fact. It made it easier to drive, but not so easy that it doesn't still take education to do it.

Similarly, the switch from DOS to Win95 didn't change the fact that when my grandmother sits down at a computer she isn't going to have any clue what to do with it unless someone is there to explain it step by step.

Engineers attempt to make computers and software easier to use all the time. The fact that they have failed to reduce the interface to the computer to a single red button labeled "Do It" is not the result of some twisted desire to keep computing out of the hands of the common masses. It's because general purpose computer and simple, toaster-like interface are fundamentally at odds.

Is the point clear? That while it is always good to make computers easier to use, they will never be so easy that you can just sit down at one, never having seen a computer before, and use it competently. You have to give.

So while I can appreciate the desire to see more work done on interfaces, I can't agree with your sentiment that it is a "fallacy that people MUST invest time in order to learn how to use their machines". I can only imagine how that must have gone, when you got your first automatic transmission vehicle. "I thought this automatic transmission was supposed to make driving the car easy! I still have to operate all these levers, pedals, and wheels! Why can't you damn techno-elitists just make it so the car takes me where I want to go?" :)

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> Citrix only works for software which has application server components

Citrix and its little sibling, MS-WTS, work with any application that can be run on a MS-WNT server.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> I don't think there was ever an MS-W13.

My mistake, should have been MS-W16. What was known as the MS Win16 API and associated plaftorm, meaning from MS Windows 2.X 386 to MS Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> could you find us a XTerm version of the real estate software that we run on client PC's individually?

MS Windows Terminal Server, or Citrix, or even Wine and X Windows.

X Terminal is a terminal running a X server to display windows from a X Window System client. A Citrix or MS RDP client will work the same, but less flexible and proprietary.

> give them open source software and they STILL ask me why the stuff doesn't "WORK RIGHT NOW"? Should my response each time they ask be, "In due time, at least now you have freedom!"?

Do your homework. Software does exist, or can be contracted out if protocols, file formats and APIs are documented. Your lack of awareness about the X Window System and MS-WTS certainly shows you've done no homework.

> you as a Debian user and or coder would approach this issue from a political point of view instead of a common sensical and practical usage one. I had thought you might have been able to rise above it however.

This wouldn't be rising, but sinking. And beware, those who don't care for freedom are doomed to misuse and even loose it.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[schnell]

The thing is, there isn't a thing that can't be done, *now*, in free software.

Riiiiight. Don't you *really* mean, "there isn't a thing that I do that can't be done?" You seem like a smart person ... you can't really be ignorant enough to think that there's a free software solution right now for everything?

As an example (the esoteric and tiny niche market of "desktop publishing"), let's take the graphic designers I support and replace their regular coffee with GNU/Folger's Crystals:

DESIGNERS: Hey, where's Photoshop?
ME: You have something better now, called the Gimp. It's Free.
DESIGNER #1: That's great. Why can't I work on this image with a embedded CMYK color profile? Professional printers require CMYK separations.
DESIGNER #2: And why don't I have pro-level color correction and matching across the entire system?
DESIGNER #3: And where are my multiple master fonts, or fonts with professional ligatures and weighting?
ME: But you don't understand, you don't need those things! Your software is Free now! You can look at the source code!
DESIGNERS: Oooh. (they look at it for a minute) So what? Is that, like, weird poetry? Their punctuation is all wrong.
ME: So you can modify it if you want to do all those things!
DESIGNERS: So how do we do that?
ME: You just need to learn C++ and programming with a GUI toolkit, plus a few other things.
DESIGNERS: I thought the idea was that people pay us to design things because we're good at that, and we pay other people to make software that does the things we need, because they're good at that?
ME: (sigh) What, do you people just not get it?

Look, I love free software and I am a great proponent of it where it is suitable ... but claiming free software is suitable everywhere is just as wrong as claiming that MS software is suitable everywhere.

Open source != design by committee

[jimfrost]

I think he has a big misconception as to how design work happens with open source. It isn't the whole internet getting together to decide what is the best way to do things. If that were the case nothing would ever get done at all. Rather, open source is more of a democracy deciding which of many dictatorships should win.

In other words, we have many independent developers who each exercise complete control over whatever they're building, many of whom are building things that compete with other versions of the same thing. The version most people use wins.

Whether or not this is going to result in more usable software is debatable, but one way to become popular is to be easier to use than the next guy.

ScrollKeeper

[Ilan Volow]

You are so correct: what you name something has a profound effect on usability.

One of the stupidest things I've ever seen in GNOME is what they named the documentation program. They named it ScrollKeeper, since in a way, documentation could be thought of as scrolls, an ancient type of media whose main users today are Dungeons and Dragons players and rabbis. A cutesy little name with geek connotations.

Unfortunately, when most users hear the word "Scroll" they associate it most often with movement in a window. Guess what happens in ScrollKeeper breaks? They user sees "ScrollKeeper Error" and unless they're a GNOME programmer they think "Holy sh*t, there's something wrong with my windows" and not "Holy sh*t, there's something wrong with my documentation system".

Would the GNOME project ever change the name "ScrollKeeper" to something like "Gnome Documentation System"? Most likely not. They love their little cute names.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[MoneyT]

I think the main issue that he's trying to get at here is, despite it's short commings, proprietary systems have one thing that OSS for the most part does not. A simple all in one package. The solutions you're providing are workarrounds and more effort than is required to just install the original application natively.

As techies, we often forget that the end users, the ones we are trying to educate and free, are lazy people. They have no desire to install an OS, install a work arround and then install the application and hope and pray that it works. They would rather take the easy way out. It's the same argument that was used often against macs, they didn't have the software people wanted in a commercial easy to find form.

Let me try to put it into another analogy. You have 2 cars. In one, the engine uses completely standard parts, runs as well or better than any other engine out there, and can be serviced by any person who takes the time to sit down with the included manual and read it. The only downside to this engine is that in order to start it, you need to turn a crank to build a charge in the battery, you need to prime the engine and then you need you pull the rip cord to get it started. Once it's started it runs beautifuly though.

The second car uses completely proprietary parts and if anything ever goes wrong, it has to be taken into the shop and serviced by trained professionals. Yet to get this engine going, all you need to do is insert the key and twist.

People into machines and the nuts and bolts of how things work will choose the car with the first engine a proclaim it's superiority from the tops of mountains. But, everyone else, the people that just want to get from point A to point B will choose the card with the second engine. Because to them, the amount of freedom they gain from having engine 1 does not outweigh the added hassle. ANd so it will be with OSS. Untill the hassle of using the software is insignificant compared to freedom, the people will not care. It's sad, it hurts some people in the long run, but unfortunately it's life.

Touchscreens for UIs

[jimfrost]

I have a two year old daughter. Almost a year ago, I gave her a computer. She picked up the use of the keyboard within a couple of days (she's using a simplified version with fewer and larger buttons) and within a couple of months exhausted the options available with the learning software that came with the keyboard.

We got new software that requires mouse interaction. It's been about six months and she's still not self-sufficient with the mouse, although she knows her way around the software quite well.

Some friends bought her a touchpad learning book (a Leap Pad) about a month ago. This uses a special pen to direct software by touching spots on a book. She picked up how to interact with the book in about two hours, which included learning that she had to push a particular spot on each page when she turned to it so that the computer would stay synchronized with the book.

Touch screens are, in my opinion, vastly easier to use than mouse-based systems. Motor control necessary for the mouse is difficult to learn; not only for children, but also for adults. It takes weeks or months for an adult to become adept with a mouse, and many never do for particularly fine tasks (like drawing). This is made all the harder by the idiocy of using hieroglyphics as a user interface design element in mouse-based interfaces.

Re:Touchscreens for UIs

[jimfrost]

I would agree if the interface was dumbed down to make the touch screen useful. It would also help if you have smaller fingers (such as children), which would allow you to use smaller interface elements.

Sorry, by "touchscreen" I didn't necessarily mean that you touched the screen with your fingers. A stylus is entirely acceptable ... like that of Palm boxes. The point (ha-ha) is that there's a direct association between what you see and what you interact with, whereas with a mouse it's indirect.

I entirely agree that some mouse-style operations such as drag-and-drop don't work well in a touchscreen paradigm, so don't use them. I do not agree that low-resolution is necessary for touch screens any more than it is for mice; I've personally used touchscreens with resolutions over 4k on a side (for interacting with satellite imagery).

The first system I ever used with a mouse was an Apple IIgs, which came with a little game that taught you how to use the mouse. I picked it up in less than 2 hours, and I don't think I was 10 years old at the time.

I had a similar experience, so I never thought it was a problem ... until my in-laws were trying to learn to use a computer. They had severe motor control problems -- it was hard for them to get the pointer onto what they wanted without looking at the mouse, it was hard for them to click without moving the pointer, and the whole concept of drag-and-drop took a long time for them to pick up. This, unfortunately, seems to be the norm amongst people rather than the exception. Go to beginner computer courses and watch them! Mice are pretty hard to use.

I'd buy a proper tablet & stylus which is sensitive enough for those tasks (not to mention that the pen interface is familiar enough to those that draw on paper)

It's exactly this kind of interface that I'm suggesting. They are vastly easier to use than mice or trackballs (BTW, I too find the trackball to be ergonomically superior). With CRTs such an interface posed similar problems to the mouse: less motor control issues (since you probably already know how to write) but very difficult hand/eye coordination because you're watching the screen but manipulating the stylus on a separate pad. I never did get the hang of that. With flat screen panels being all the rage today there's no reason we can't apply a touchscreen to the flat screen and use it as a tablet interface.

We know those systems work ... after all, there are some thirty million palmtops out there that use such an interface.

Re:Macintosh

[MoneyT]

copy current window to clipboard

Primary method:
Click and hold on the edit menu, while still holding the mouse button, select the option "select all", release mouse button. Go back to the edit menu, select copy, release button.

Secondary method: While holding the command key, press and release the "a" key. Press and release the "c" key.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> The solutions you're providing are workarrounds and more effort than is required to just install the original application natively.

Not so simple.

What I am saying is, no need to keep each desktop. Give people X terminals. They will be able to access all applications from servers, and never know it -- because they have the icons and menus as if they had everything locally installed. It would not make a difference if the program was free or proprietary, POSIX or MS-W32, it would be there. Obviously no need to pay or pirate proprietary software where free would do, and many gaps can be filled if people would, say, contribute a fraction of their potential MS licensing fees to, say, CMYK support in the Gimp or free fonts.

See? No workarounds needed at an office. At home, people still would want things preinstalled. Debian to the people: once installed, it just runs, and is easy to maintain. Preinstallation takes lots of pain out of the equation. Why, naive users cannot install even MS-W32!

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> Professional printers require CMYK separations.

Old facts die hard, huh?

> where are my multiple master fonts, or fonts with professional ligatures and weighting?

The rest is just more of the same. If just a fraction of what users spend on licensing was directed to create, say, free fonts, then we would have had them for a long time now. But you miss a point: fonts are not software. They can be created with free software, they can be distributed gratis together with free software, but they are, in the end, data. They do not infringe on freedom as much as proprietary software, or rather not at all, as long as the font format in itself remains public.

> You just need to learn C++ and programming with a GUI toolkit, plus a few other things.

Now you are trolling. You know the Gimp can be programmed in Scheme, and that is as easy as it gets short of hiring programmers. Which is what should be done in the first place anyway.

Christ

[superdan2k]

I thought that headline said "Norm MacDonald"...good lord. A million scenarios ran through my mind, but the primary question was, "What makes a pogue that made a movie like Dirty Work qualified to comment on software?

Re:Mod parent down!

[ebbomega]

If anything, that post was asking to mod me down.

And lo and behold, it did.

I'm no so much a karma whore as a karma masochist.

Which leaves me to this question:

What kind of crack have you been smoking, and where can I get some?

Re:Nothing more could have been done to prevent S1

[Gerry Gleason]

Point taken about the speed, but I hardly think it could have been 150% of rated. I'm not a pilot, but don't these things cruise at about 600mph? Ok, so it might be lower at sea level ... If it's only 150% of the designed impact speed, I doubt the difference would have kept the fire retardant on. Sure would have been nice if the fuel flame retardant was part of SOP for jets, though. OTOH, the program also said most of the fire was from the contents of the building, not the fuel which mostly burned up in the fireball outside the towers.

Saw that Frontline and another one last year about what was known more generally about the terror threat. The main thing is that nobody takes any real responsibility. We know hindsight is 20-20, but can't someone step up to the plate?

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> Open source rules, and is an inherently better way to develop software

As long as you keep thinking about OpenSource and "a [...] better way to develop" you will miss the freedom point. It is sure worthwhile to sacrifice some convenience for freedom, specially when all functionality is actually available, even if perhaps not quite as conveniently.

Also, your "dialog-propaganda-as-reasoning" is flawed, because a you fail to mention any real functionality that you suppose to be missing, and because it ignores the point that, for all licensing fees one has to pay, he would probably get all the convenience he wants plus more functionality than proprietary software offers, not to mention standards-compliance -- and thus the actual ownership and control over one's own data -- and freedom, which is a convenience in itself.

I see many reasons why some people don't see the problems of proprietary software. They don't pay for the software they daily use and thus ignore its real price and cost, they don't abide by the license terms they are supposed to; they don't really understand the security, reliability, privacy and data accessibility issues; they don't realise the biggest proprietary software company isn't profitable and consequently hasn't yet proved its practical viability.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> The production of art wasn't that high, since not that many people could afford to patrons

It isn't yet and never will be. Most of what gets peddled as art is narcisist and boring on one side, or mass consumption narcisist trash on the other. To do art requires not only talent, but discipline, sensibility, willingness to serve one's work and to communicate it with the world.

> It requires a huge, empty gap between the median and highest incomes.

Well, this gap has always existed and will always be there, simply because most people can't be bothered to try to become rich, and many couldn't for their lives. But that it is required is doubtful: enterprises, governments, foundations are also patrons. And sure the gap needn't be empty, why it should?

> So how would this work with Free software? I'd imaging that there would be a virtual firm consisting of interface designers and programmers.

There are many such entities, from small consulting groups to the big non-profits that develop several projects. For instance, SPI helps develop Debian and other projects; you can donate to SPI, or to the FSF, or to the Apache Group or to a BSD team...

> They, for political reasons, would probably have to fork the code.

Nonsense. If you can show you are doing the right thing, you are allowed to do what you want. If you aren't, it is highly probable your fork will become the standard version, as happened with egcs and others.

> if anyone else wants to form one of these Free software design firms, I'm game.

Do your homework, several such exist. But you must be good, and show you are worthy, before joining.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> you refuse to admit that proprietary software is the best choice for most regular users because the hassle of using open source software outweighs the freedom you gain by using it.

Using is no hassle. Setting it up is. Preinstalling does the trick, or good system administration in office settings. And anyway, freedom, reliability and security are higher values than convenience, were it not for this instant gratification age of ours.

> It is absoltutely NOT worthwile to sacrifice some functionality so that we can all pledge allegience to the GPL.

Once again, no functionality is sacrificed, only convenience. And lot else is gained besides freedom, including functionality. Please try to prove me wrong.

> you're trying to tell us all that Microsoft is not a profitable corporation because of some link to a very obscure website.

What has obscurity to do with it? The guy either is wrong, or right. Read it and form your own opinion. Hint: since 1.99[78] the guy has been telling the world MS has questionable accounting. Incidentally, some of these accounting practices are involved in Enron's downfall.

> I think in this current environment of discovering accounting tricks that Microsoft's own tricks would have been uncovered by now if they had any.

How old are you, what's your background? Life isn't so simple. MS has big lobby, and huge advertisement budget. Press is owned by groups that have a vested interest in not rocking the boat. Journalists understand little of technology or finance, so investigative reports are mostly done in unrelated areas of "human interest", politics or ecology.

> I do know they settled recently with the SEC but I cannot remember exactly what for

This is an unrelated issue. Anyway, after Enron and WorldCom a SEC settlement isn't anymore a good behaviour certificate.

> I DO know that the situation wasn't so grave as to switch their status from on of a profitable corp to an unprofitable one.

C'mon, you don't remember the issue you refer to, and you didn't care to read Parish's paper. MS is in the red since 1.995. It doesn't appear in the statements because they have been charging stock options as expenses for tax purposes but not for taxes. If they are charged as expenses, the red ink appears. If they aren't, paying taxes would also have sent them to the deep red ink ocean.

Either you addresses the points I raised, or I will simply ignore your next replies, the current one being just reaffirmation of already proffered unfounded convictions.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[reallocate]

Apologies for coming in late, but I must ask: Why would a professional design shop, lacking any interest in or motivation by free software ideology, drop Photoshop for Gimp, and then expend additional resources to hire programmers to re-code Gimp to give themselves the capabilities they already with Photoshop and the other commercial product they were using? This just doesn't make any business sense at all. In addition, if their programmers modified Gimp to provide the shop with a competitive advantage, that advantage would be fleeting because the license would require them to share the code.

Open source and free software will not succeed by virtue of the ideology that engendered it, but by producing software that is better than the competition.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[reallocate]

Wouldn't it be easier just to write better software than to try to change the world?

Re:Macintosh

[pommiekiwifruit]

I think you will find that "select-all, copy" merely copies the contents of the window (if it is a window of an application that allows that) rather than the graphical representation of the window.

It does not copy the scroll bars or title of the window, which was the keypress sequence I was alluding to and the task required in the class.

The corresponding sequence in Windows is "Alt-Print Screen" which you can do one handed, and is easier to remember.

Re:Macintosh

[MoneyT]

Ok, in that case the command you were looking for is command-shift-3. Albeit alt-printscreen would be easier, but when the command was originaly put in, macs did not use extended keyboards..