The only advantage of open source is that if you are one of these rare unicorns with the technical ability, you can fix it yourself. Or continue/fork projects yourself.
Even if this is the only advantage, that alone puts it light-years beyond proprietary code.
The article is about this particular issue. But if you've followed what's been happening with the W3C over the years, the larger picture is pretty clear.
This is gone now and, at best, replaced by much more primitive AB tests.
This brings up another thing that I think has had a truly awful effect on user interfaces: telemetry data. It's so much easier and cheaper to just base your decisions on telemetry rather than actually doing user testing, so that's the way things have gone.
The problem is that telemetry data distorts everything (for example, it encourages idiocy such as assuming that reducing the number of clicks to accomplish something always makes things easier for the user) and is very, very easy to misinterpret.
Maybe my ability to memorize the location and function of a large number of text items in apps I don't use often is below average
Actually, this is the main problem I have with the ribbon (aside from it wasting a ton of space) -- I can never remember where things are in the damned thing, so it takes me forever to hunt through and find the thing I need.
But that was when we wanted to do things like download an entire movie and play on various devices. Now everything is streaming and you don't even notice the DRM.
Speak for yourself. I don't do streaming, and probably never will, because it's a huge waste of money. If I want content, I buy it DRM-free so I can format and time shift and don't have to worry whether or not it will still be available the next time I want it.
since EME forbids opensource due to patents and licensing agreements?
The EME does not forbid open source. But the EME does not actually cover the DRM plugins themselves -- those are inevitably proprietary binary blobs that are platform dependent, but not because of anything in the EME requires them to be.
I disagree, but this point is a matter of opinion rather than fact.
Now other than getting up an leaving in a huff because they didn't get their way, they should be asking themselves, what other alternatives to DRM is there that can address the concerns of the 58% who approved of it.
The EFF did so, repeatedly, within the process. What they were pushing for wasn't even the elimination of the EME (they saw that the EME was happening no matter what), but the inclusion of things that would mitigate some of the worst dangers the EME presents -- such as allowing security researchers to be able to investigate it without fear of prosecution through the DMCA.
As the process went on, the EFF kept watering down their proposals until the final one was really very weak and would not have prevented any of the things that the major corporations said they wanted to accomplish.
So to say that the EFF was being too hardnosed, wasn't proposing compromises, or that their leaving was just petulance is simple, objectively, incorrect.
Wouldn't be the first time they willfully ignore W3C standards.
This is one point where the EME thing isn't quite as bad as it appears -- supporting EME is officially optional. Browsers can refuse to implement it and still claim to be 100% compliant with the HTML5 standard.
"Didn't do what EFF wanted" isn't the same as "ignored the EFF".
True, but I don't think that's what happened. I think that the EFF left because of long-term ongoing problems that have been getting worse over the years.
I think this is more of a "last straw" thing than being pissy because of a single issue.
This is going to be the undoing of the open internet, more than any other single thing in its history.
Well, let's not get too hyperbolic. This is a terrible thing, but it only affects the web, not the entire internet. There are bigger threats to the internet at large than this.
and them bailing on the organization leaves the people with one less voice on it.
There's no point in having a voice when that voice is just going to be ignored. In fact, it can be harmful in the big picture if your presence serves to legitimize the organization.
Over the past few years the W3C has made its priority clear: it exists to further corporate goals. The EFF being part of that only serves to put a veneer over that that fact.
Designers need to internalize the essential truth that all user interface changes are expensive for existing users, even if the changes are clearly for the better.
If the benefit of the change is greater than the cost, users celebrate it. If not, users rightfully despise it.
But the user-friendly way to do this is simple: you know how many search results there are, and you scale the scrollbar accordingly from the very start.
Then the scrollbar would be able to fulfill one of its primary functions: giving you an indication of how much data there is to scroll through.
I'm thinking of Facebook's change to the real names policy -- the amount of abuse was not affected by it, according to Facebook. I can't find the citation, though, so feel free to disregard it.
However, if you look at the (numerous) studies about anonymity and its effect on online abuse, it's hard to find any that clearly support the notion that the anonymity of abusers makes abuse more likely. There is a strong correlation between anonymity of victims and abuse, though. A plausible hypothesis for why this may be relates to what I said before: abuse is more likely when people are dehumanized.
In any case, this is clearly an unsettled area. By the way, my claim is no more or less "spectacular" (I think you meant to say "exceptional", as in "exceptional claims require exceptional evidence") than yours. In reality, neither of our claims are exceptional. They are both entirely plausible and there isn't overwhelming evidence one way or the other.
Of course I could be wrong -- if you have such overwhelming evidence, then I'd be happy to see it. And, scientifically speaking, you're the one making a claim of causation, so technically the burden of proof is on you, not me.
Slashdot Mirror
I have maybe 2-3 extensions and they are from known entities
Do you keep watch to make sure that those extensions don't get sold to someone else?
The only advantage of open source is that if you are one of these rare unicorns with the technical ability, you can fix it yourself. Or continue/fork projects yourself.
Even if this is the only advantage, that alone puts it light-years beyond proprietary code.
Always assume that any software that can talk over the internet is spying on you. It seems to be true more often than not.
The article is about this particular issue. But if you've followed what's been happening with the W3C over the years, the larger picture is pretty clear.
This is gone now and, at best, replaced by much more primitive AB tests.
This brings up another thing that I think has had a truly awful effect on user interfaces: telemetry data. It's so much easier and cheaper to just base your decisions on telemetry rather than actually doing user testing, so that's the way things have gone.
The problem is that telemetry data distorts everything (for example, it encourages idiocy such as assuming that reducing the number of clicks to accomplish something always makes things easier for the user) and is very, very easy to misinterpret.
Screwing with the interface props up the illusion of progress and keeps the new and shiny brigade out and buying.
Maybe, but pointless UI changes are the primary reason why I don't let any of my software auto-update anymore.
access the ones they need in a direct, discoverable fashion.
Judging by the majority of user interfaces I've seen coming out over the past few years, "discoverability" is no longer considered an important thing.
Maybe my ability to memorize the location and function of a large number of text items in apps I don't use often is below average
Actually, this is the main problem I have with the ribbon (aside from it wasting a ton of space) -- I can never remember where things are in the damned thing, so it takes me forever to hunt through and find the thing I need.
But that was when we wanted to do things like download an entire movie and play on various devices. Now everything is streaming and you don't even notice the DRM.
Speak for yourself. I don't do streaming, and probably never will, because it's a huge waste of money. If I want content, I buy it DRM-free so I can format and time shift and don't have to worry whether or not it will still be available the next time I want it.
since EME forbids opensource due to patents and licensing agreements?
The EME does not forbid open source. But the EME does not actually cover the DRM plugins themselves -- those are inevitably proprietary binary blobs that are platform dependent, but not because of anything in the EME requires them to be.
DRM isn't an extreme feature
I disagree, but this point is a matter of opinion rather than fact.
Now other than getting up an leaving in a huff because they didn't get their way, they should be asking themselves, what other alternatives to DRM is there that can address the concerns of the 58% who approved of it.
The EFF did so, repeatedly, within the process. What they were pushing for wasn't even the elimination of the EME (they saw that the EME was happening no matter what), but the inclusion of things that would mitigate some of the worst dangers the EME presents -- such as allowing security researchers to be able to investigate it without fear of prosecution through the DMCA.
As the process went on, the EFF kept watering down their proposals until the final one was really very weak and would not have prevented any of the things that the major corporations said they wanted to accomplish.
So to say that the EFF was being too hardnosed, wasn't proposing compromises, or that their leaving was just petulance is simple, objectively, incorrect.
What is your problem with it?
As a user, my problem with it is security. That's why I generally leave it disabled.
As a developer, my problem with it is that it's not a very good language.
Wouldn't be the first time they willfully ignore W3C standards.
This is one point where the EME thing isn't quite as bad as it appears -- supporting EME is officially optional. Browsers can refuse to implement it and still claim to be 100% compliant with the HTML5 standard.
"Didn't do what EFF wanted" isn't the same as "ignored the EFF".
True, but I don't think that's what happened. I think that the EFF left because of long-term ongoing problems that have been getting worse over the years.
I think this is more of a "last straw" thing than being pissy because of a single issue.
And it also made the Internet much more useful, because there's so much of it.
True, although I think this is overstated. But I was commenting on internet culture, not the amount of information available.
The problem that ribbon UI solves is how to make thousands of commands available to the user.
I argue that it doesn't solve that problem. Or at least solves it in way that is worse than more traditional methods.
By that definition, AI has been a solved problem for a very long time and almost all (or all) living things are intelligent.
This is going to be the undoing of the open internet, more than any other single thing in its history.
Well, let's not get too hyperbolic. This is a terrible thing, but it only affects the web, not the entire internet. There are bigger threats to the internet at large than this.
and them bailing on the organization leaves the people with one less voice on it.
There's no point in having a voice when that voice is just going to be ignored. In fact, it can be harmful in the big picture if your presence serves to legitimize the organization.
Over the past few years the W3C has made its priority clear: it exists to further corporate goals. The EFF being part of that only serves to put a veneer over that that fact.
I applaud the EFF for doing as they've done.
Ubuntu is Gnome territory, so I would fully expect to see a lot of Gnome-love in the results.
I agree.
But I think there's a trap that developers have fallen into here: different form factors have different UI requirements.
Trying to make a single "UI to rule them all" results, at best, in a user interface that is barely tolerable on any of them.
Yes.
Designers need to internalize the essential truth that all user interface changes are expensive for existing users, even if the changes are clearly for the better.
If the benefit of the change is greater than the cost, users celebrate it. If not, users rightfully despise it.
But the user-friendly way to do this is simple: you know how many search results there are, and you scale the scrollbar accordingly from the very start.
Then the scrollbar would be able to fulfill one of its primary functions: giving you an indication of how much data there is to scroll through.
I'm thinking of Facebook's change to the real names policy -- the amount of abuse was not affected by it, according to Facebook. I can't find the citation, though, so feel free to disregard it.
However, if you look at the (numerous) studies about anonymity and its effect on online abuse, it's hard to find any that clearly support the notion that the anonymity of abusers makes abuse more likely. There is a strong correlation between anonymity of victims and abuse, though. A plausible hypothesis for why this may be relates to what I said before: abuse is more likely when people are dehumanized.
In any case, this is clearly an unsettled area. By the way, my claim is no more or less "spectacular" (I think you meant to say "exceptional", as in "exceptional claims require exceptional evidence") than yours. In reality, neither of our claims are exceptional. They are both entirely plausible and there isn't overwhelming evidence one way or the other.
Of course I could be wrong -- if you have such overwhelming evidence, then I'd be happy to see it. And, scientifically speaking, you're the one making a claim of causation, so technically the burden of proof is on you, not me.
I really like this idea.