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'Geek Speak' Confuses Net Users
jonney02 writes "BBC News is running the following story 'The average home computer user is bamboozled by technology jargon which is used to warn people about the most serious security threats online.' "
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It seems like the writer of the article is confused about these "geek" terms as well, as he got the definition of a Trojan wrong.
From the article: A Trojan is a malicious piece of software which installs itself on a person's computer without their knowledge.
A Trojan, or Trojan Horse, is actually a malicious program that purports to be a legitimate application. To be classified as a Trojan, it must require execution by the user. The Trojan Horse of myth was left at the gates of Troy seemingly as a gift, but actually housed men who unlocked the gates to allow the invading armies into Troy. Hence the name Trojan Horse for the program.
Wikipedia says: A trojan horse computer program has a useful and desired function, or at least it has the appearance of having such. Secretly the program performs other, undesired functions.
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
As programmers, we have to consider communicating with our users better. For instance, Apple has the right idea when it comes to dialog boxes: always make the options for each button a verb. Yes/No/Cancel buttons require users to read a usually convoluted sentence and then interpret what they're agreeing to. This causes all sorts of usability problems.
To run with the parent poster's dialog, a more usable dialog would read:
Just by reading the button text a user will know precisely what each option will do.
This is something that programmers both open-source and closed can do right now to enhance usability. Apple has the right idea, and there's no reason why we should have software that confuses our users with unclear dialogs.