Don't take this the wrong way, but what the company did was stupid.
The web has a different style of user interaction than regular desktop. Moving from regular desktop software to a web-based thing is not a "minor" change. It fundamentally changes how a user will interact with the machine.
From what I can glean (I'm only guessing here) from information provided, the text field in the Access app provided an incremental search that was far more responsive and non-modal than the "click-and-wait" browser-based thing that replaced it. Responsive and non-modal tends to make users happy. Delayed and modal tends to get them annoyed.
One thing that I've noticed that the movement to put deskop linux in corporations and the movement to make everything a web-based app have in common is that both these movements are usually spear-headed by systems administrators and programmers who:
Are really lousy at gauging the usability of any kind software in general
Believe that as two pieces of software that have the same basic functionality have the same basic usability
Only understand the cost of a computer in terms of what you pay for the software/equipment, not understanding the most important monetary factor is the actual work done with the machine. Most emphasis is put on the cost of licenses, virtually none is put on the revenue brought in by employees using the software.
Seem relatively unconcerned with the effect that their choice of software will have on the end-users
First and foremost cite stability, manageability, and centralization as their reasons for wanting to switch.
Often have an agenda (religious, political, etc) that has little do with users being productive on the machines.
Too often, end users end up getting blamed for the dumb actions of programmers. Too often, I've heard linux geeks complain "this person didn't like this piece of linux software because it 'wasn't like windows'". When I've taken a look at the Linux version of the software in question, what I usually see is poorly laid out dialogs, system-oriented jargon, controls with related functions being placed far from each other and unrelated controls placed too near to each other and looking related, etc.
Red Hat: Spent $650,000,000 buying out Cygnus, ~$50,000,000 buying out dot coms, and recently sold $500,000,000 in bonds
Suse: Bought out for $200,000,000
The problem isn't that there isn't money, the problem is that linux distribution companies are run by unix geeks who don't feel that usability is something worth spending money on. If you tell them they have usability problems in their software, the only thing they're going to do is hire more kernel people.
Moreover, lot of stuff the GNOME usability test turned up was stuff that anyone with any kind of background in HCI would have been able to know was a problem without usability testing.
A better system would be one where the app is shipped with all the dynamic libraries it needs to run in a folder that is represented at the app executable itself (a la OS X). If the computer's central repository of dynamic libs could provide what the app needed to link, then memory could be conserved. But if the app had problems linking to a library in that central repository, it could link to it's local copy.
Of course, this would require using a bit more of the copious hard disk space we have as well as more RAM, but in return, the end-user would get a rock-solid app.
This sort of exchange is called an "engineering trade-off." The problem with OSS is that many OSS developers, especially linux kernel hackers, refuse to make such exchanges for any piece of software that runs outside a server closet. Using more disk space (and in some cases, more RAM) offends their programmer's sense of elegence, just like a tank's large engine, heavy metal armor, and rotten fuel economy offends the sensibilities of someone who designs economy cars for a living.
Just because they say "you can't criticize because it's a volunteer work" doesn't mean they won't say "This is the year of Desktop Linux".
Just because they say "you can't criticize because it's a volunteer work" doesn't mean they won't try their damnedest to push their software into school systems, governments, and corps. Ready or not, usable or not.
Users almost never blame the UI for their problems. They just say "Computers are evil. I hate computers" and try to spend as little time with computers as possible. Because they try to spend as little time with computers as possible, they don't spend very much on hardware or software as they would have otherwise.
The tech bubble bursts, and half of all Slashdotters end up working at Burger King.
Businesses almost never blame the UI for the problems. They just say "Computers are evil. We have computers. That's why we pay those monkeys in IT to make them do things." The bad UI makes the business extremely unproductive, and they eventually realize that computers are a giant money pit. Rather than trying to make the work done with the computers more valuable and more productive (thus *increasing* revenue), which the business feels is impossible (they don't connect "bad UI" with "bad productivity and lower revenue"), they decide to *decrease* the cost of using the unproductive computers by moving the computer usage offshore.
Thus, decreased productivity caused by bad UI is put into economic equillibrium by decreased salaries paid elsewhere, and half of all Slashdotters end up working at burger king.
Most of the faults of Open Source people cite (like in the article) really have nothing to do with the concept of open code and absolutely everything to do with Unix Cultural Bigotry.
As Unix people tend to dominate Open Source, most of the problems caused by the Unix culture tend to be synonymous with Open Source.
Open Source companies have tons of money. Look at all the kernel hackers they hire to work on stuff.
Red Hat spent $700,000,000 on buying out compiler companies and dot-coms, and then the reason their programmers give me for why their software has usability problems is "we can't afford an HCI department."
Linux companies like Red Hat (and Suse, bought out for $200,000,000) have tons of money. It's just that they don't consider usability to be very high on their list of priorities. To these folks, its only the technical stuff and server stuff that matters. Screw having a properly trained user interaction dept that makes their software easier to use.
The end-user centric culture of mac developers was more concerned with coherence and consistency than abstraction and network transparency. They were more concerned with the end-user across sitting across from their machine, and less concerned with the geek sitting across the network. Quartz vs. X11 is an excellent example of how two different developer cultures take two different paths given the same (or roughly the same) basic technology (i.e. unix).
The difference in developer communities is manifest in the choices and engineering trade-offs they make.
To put things a little more elegantly than the parent post, I might suggestion the grandparent poster read Joel Spolsky's biculturalism article.
We often see in the linux community the false logic of:
OS X is successful with end-users OS X is a unix Linux is a unix Therefore Linux can be successful with end users
The problems that make linux "un-userfriendly" are cultural, not technological. When people keep citing OS X, via its being a unix, as validating the concept of Desktop Linux, what they keep forgetting is that the mac and linux developer cultures are entirely different. The mac developer culture has a proud 20 year tradition of making graphical software for end-users and valuing usability; the linux developers comes from a 30 year tradition of programmers making command-line software for other programmers and not caring about the non-technical user's experience whatsoever.
Such long-held, deeply-ingrained traditions of the different developer communities affect the way their software evolves, even decades after those traditions began. The answer to the question of why can't linux be like OS X is not something that a lot of linux folks like to hear--Linux can be "purdy and usable" like OS X, but the linux community has to stop idolizing their unix cultural forbears and start realizing that it was the cultural practices of those forbears that put them in the miserable situation they're in today.
Desktop Linux isn't a battle of Proprietary vs. Free. It's really a culture war of graphical vs. command-line, end-user vs. geek, macintosh vs. unix. That's where the real conflict is; people just tend to obscure the conflict by focusing on what license something is put under.
As the mods to the parent post illustrates, when people who have legitimate grievances and complaints with the usability of desktop linux get attacked by the linux faithful and get modded as flamebait, it's very easy to see why linux has been "almost ready" for nearly a decade.
An cosmonaut drops his freeze-dried ice cream down a shaft, it hits with a thud, and then they hear strange drumming sounds...next thing you know, the ISS will be swarming with Goblins.
And yet Open Source is still churning out high quality software at a rate to make MS blush, and only a food would think that the quality of the Linux kernel was entirely about the number of developers working on it.
When food can judge the quality of the linux kernal, that's the point where genetic modification has gone too far.
So a GUI with a "Save" menu item that deletes everything on a user's hard drive--it's no worse than a different GUI with a "Save" menu item that saves the user's work? It's all just a matter of taste, one not being any better than the other, right?
What I find even more disgusting is that the free software advocates:
have these attitudes towards non-technical users
then deny that their software has usability problems and claim their software is just as usable as MacOS/Windows
then tell people who have problems with those usability problems to quit whining about what they get for free
then tell those same people that if they don't like the software, they have a choice not to use it
then advocate/lobby for the software to be forced on workers and students in businesses, governments, and schools where users have no choice in the software they run
and after all this say "how dare you insult the work of volunteers" to any one who points out the usability problems in their software
For too long Free Software has been depriving end-users of the Freedom To Get Stuff Done With A Minimum Of Fuss. If the Free Software people continue to engage in such behavior and do not recognize usability as an essential software freedom, they will find themselves sooner or later in a very nasty civil war with others who do. And at that point, SCO and Microsoft will be the least of their problems.
I think that you would really like Jef Raskin's book The Humane Interface (Jef Raskin was the guy who came up with the idea for the Macintosh). His chapter on habituation, the "you can always find it here so it's second nature" phenomenon mentioned in your post, is something you'd find interesting.
Jef has also launched a Humane Interface project on SourceForge, if you're interested in contributing to that.
Just repeat after yourself: "There is no such thing as redhat, there is no such thing as Redhat."
True, Redhat *sells* boxes of software. But what you're getting for your money is the support that comes with it. Right?
The problem is that Red Hat spends $700,000,000 buying dot-coms and compiler companies, and then their programmers tell me the reason why their software is so lacking in usability is that they can't afford to have a usability dept.
Just because a company makes money on Open Source support doesn't mean they are actually going to use that money to make their software more usable.
In a way, Gruber is right. As far as usability goes, there really is no such thing as Red Hat; the company has always been non-existant in that field.
KDE got it wrong in 1997 when the used the terminology "Directory" instead of "Folder" (which Apple got right in 1984), and then it took KDE seven years to finally change to the more consistent terminology (after much resistance and a few flamewars), and the KDE UI is still absolutely jammed with way too many options and visual clutter.
I could not think of a better example of a Free Software project that corroborates Gruber's view point than KDE.
The parent authors comments about GUI relation to technical stuff reminded me of something I posted several months back on Slashdot. I think it really needs yet another reposting.
-- About 9 months ago, Eric Raymond came to speak at my LUG. No matter what else I think of him, he's really intersting and a really good speaker. I wouldn't for a moment knock his entertainment value, no matter what else I might have to say about the guy.
However, there was this one point during this discussing at the dinner before his speech where me and several of the LUG members were talking with him about linux GUI's and the future of the Linux Desktop. Eric Raymond said something about the whole unix system of creating back ends first and then grafting GUI's on to those later.
My response: "But Eric, most usability experts recommend you design the interface first and then write the code".
His response: "then they're wrong."
My response: "But what if there's something that the backend folks didn't think of when they wrote there code that the GUI really needs? Or what if there's something in the back-end that just doesn't work once you add a GUI?"
His response: "then it needs to be fixed."
My response: "But what if so much code has already been written that no programmer wants to go back and make all the changes necessary to make it really work?"
His response: "then we've got a problem."
It was at this moment I realized two things:
1. The Open Source leadership is just stuck in command-line land as your typical rabid, BOFH linux zealot, and is just as clueless about designing desktop software and user interfaces. The leaders of Open Source are as desktopically bankrupt as their followers, and it is unbelievably disturbing that people like this are placed in charge of leading efforts to make alternatives to windows for non-technical users.
2. For Free Software/Open Source to succeed in being a viable alternative for non-programmers, it must be once and for all divorced from the Unix Culture. The concept of freely distributable and modifiable code must be seperated from the concept of The Unix Way.
Slashdot Mirror
The web has a different style of user interaction than regular desktop. Moving from regular desktop software to a web-based thing is not a "minor" change. It fundamentally changes how a user will interact with the machine.
From what I can glean (I'm only guessing here) from information provided, the text field in the Access app provided an incremental search that was far more responsive and non-modal than the "click-and-wait" browser-based thing that replaced it. Responsive and non-modal tends to make users happy. Delayed and modal tends to get them annoyed.
One thing that I've noticed that the movement to put deskop linux in corporations and the movement to make everything a web-based app have in common is that both these movements are usually spear-headed by systems administrators and programmers who:
Too often, end users end up getting blamed for the dumb actions of programmers. Too often, I've heard linux geeks complain "this person didn't like this piece of linux software because it 'wasn't like windows'". When I've taken a look at the Linux version of the software in question, what I usually see is poorly laid out dialogs, system-oriented jargon, controls with related functions being placed far from each other and unrelated controls placed too near to each other and looking related, etc.
The problem isn't that there isn't money, the problem is that linux distribution companies are run by unix geeks who don't feel that usability is something worth spending money on. If you tell them they have usability problems in their software, the only thing they're going to do is hire more kernel people.
Moreover, lot of stuff the GNOME usability test turned up was stuff that anyone with any kind of background in HCI would have been able to know was a problem without usability testing.
A better system would be one where the app is shipped with all the dynamic libraries it needs to run in a folder that is represented at the app executable itself (a la OS X). If the computer's central repository of dynamic libs could provide what the app needed to link, then memory could be conserved. But if the app had problems linking to a library in that central repository, it could link to it's local copy.
Of course, this would require using a bit more of the copious hard disk space we have as well as more RAM, but in return, the end-user would get a rock-solid app.
This sort of exchange is called an "engineering trade-off." The problem with OSS is that many OSS developers, especially linux kernel hackers, refuse to make such exchanges for any piece of software that runs outside a server closet. Using more disk space (and in some cases, more RAM) offends their programmer's sense of elegence, just like a tank's large engine, heavy metal armor, and rotten fuel economy offends the sensibilities of someone who designs economy cars for a living.
Bonch, an addendum.
Just because they say "you can't criticize because it's a volunteer work" doesn't mean they won't say "This is the year of Desktop Linux".
Just because they say "you can't criticize because it's a volunteer work" doesn't mean they won't try their damnedest to push their software into school systems, governments, and corps. Ready or not, usable or not.
Good Artists Create.
Great Artists Steal.
Mediocre Artists Steal All The Wrong Things From Great Artists.
Bad Artists Steal From Mediocre Artists.
Make whatever platform analogies you will.
Users almost never blame the UI for their problems. They just say "Computers are evil. I hate computers" and try to spend as little time with computers as possible. Because they try to spend as little time with computers as possible, they don't spend very much on hardware or software as they would have otherwise.
The tech bubble bursts, and half of all Slashdotters end up working at Burger King.
Businesses almost never blame the UI for the problems. They just say "Computers are evil. We have computers. That's why we pay those monkeys in IT to make them do things." The bad UI makes the business extremely unproductive, and they eventually realize that computers are a giant money pit. Rather than trying to make the work done with the computers more valuable and more productive (thus *increasing* revenue), which the business feels is impossible (they don't connect "bad UI" with "bad productivity and lower revenue"), they decide to *decrease* the cost of using the unproductive computers by moving the computer usage offshore.
Thus, decreased productivity caused by bad UI is put into economic equillibrium by decreased salaries paid elsewhere, and half of all Slashdotters end up working at burger king.
Very true.
Most of the faults of Open Source people cite (like in the article) really have nothing to do with the concept of open code and absolutely everything to do with Unix Cultural Bigotry.
As Unix people tend to dominate Open Source, most of the problems caused by the Unix culture tend to be synonymous with Open Source.
Open Source companies have tons of money. Look at all the kernel hackers they hire to work on stuff.
Red Hat spent $700,000,000 on buying out compiler companies and dot-coms, and then the reason their programmers give me for why their software has usability problems is "we can't afford an HCI department."
Linux companies like Red Hat (and Suse, bought out for $200,000,000) have tons of money. It's just that they don't consider usability to be very high on their list of priorities. To these folks, its only the technical stuff and server stuff that matters. Screw having a properly trained user interaction dept that makes their software easier to use.
Not only do they prevent you from enjoying sex, but now they attack your computer as well.
And thus the evil of condoms is revealed.
Exactly.
The end-user centric culture of mac developers was more concerned with coherence and consistency than abstraction and network transparency. They were more concerned with the end-user across sitting across from their machine, and less concerned with the geek sitting across the network. Quartz vs. X11 is an excellent example of how two different developer cultures take two different paths given the same (or roughly the same) basic technology (i.e. unix).
The difference in developer communities is manifest in the choices and engineering trade-offs they make.
To put things a little more elegantly than the parent post, I might suggestion the grandparent poster read Joel Spolsky's biculturalism article.
We often see in the linux community the false logic of:
OS X is successful with end-users
OS X is a unix
Linux is a unix
Therefore Linux can be successful with end users
The problems that make linux "un-userfriendly" are cultural, not technological. When people keep citing OS X, via its being a unix, as validating the concept of Desktop Linux, what they keep forgetting is that the mac and linux developer cultures are entirely different. The mac developer culture has a proud 20 year tradition of making graphical software for end-users and valuing usability; the linux developers comes from a 30 year tradition of programmers making command-line software for other programmers and not caring about the non-technical user's experience whatsoever.
Such long-held, deeply-ingrained traditions of the different developer communities affect the way their software evolves, even decades after those traditions began. The answer to the question of why can't linux be like OS X is not something that a lot of linux folks like to hear--Linux can be "purdy and usable" like OS X, but the linux community has to stop idolizing their unix cultural forbears and start realizing that it was the cultural practices of those forbears that put them in the miserable situation they're in today.
Desktop Linux isn't a battle of Proprietary vs. Free. It's really a culture war of graphical vs. command-line, end-user vs. geek, macintosh vs. unix. That's where the real conflict is; people just tend to obscure the conflict by focusing on what license something is put under.
As the mods to the parent post illustrates, when people who have legitimate grievances and complaints with the usability of desktop linux get attacked by the linux faithful and get modded as flamebait, it's very easy to see why linux has been "almost ready" for nearly a decade.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the spammer was the one sending those "GET OUT OF DEBT NOW!" messages.
An cosmonaut drops his freeze-dried ice cream down a shaft, it hits with a thud, and then they hear strange drumming sounds...next thing you know, the ISS will be swarming with Goblins.
What a waste of a perfectly good space station.
Special breeds often suffer from inbreeding.
And yet Open Source is still churning out high quality software at a rate to make MS blush, and only a food would think that the quality of the Linux kernel was entirely about the number of developers working on it.
When food can judge the quality of the linux kernal, that's the point where genetic modification has gone too far.
then I find such GUI nightmares as X-CD-Roaster.
The usability of any linux program beginning with the prefix "X" always sucks.
I tried to tell exactly this to ESR. I tried to tell him that virtually all usability experts say you should do this (to at least some degree).
He told me "they're wrong".
Nod to Gruber; futility in action.
So a GUI with a "Save" menu item that deletes everything on a user's hard drive--it's no worse than a different GUI with a "Save" menu item that saves the user's work? It's all just a matter of taste, one not being any better than the other, right?
For too long Free Software has been depriving end-users of the Freedom To Get Stuff Done With A Minimum Of Fuss. If the Free Software people continue to engage in such behavior and do not recognize usability as an essential software freedom, they will find themselves sooner or later in a very nasty civil war with others who do. And at that point, SCO and Microsoft will be the least of their problems.
I think that you would really like Jef Raskin's book The Humane Interface (Jef Raskin was the guy who came up with the idea for the Macintosh). His chapter on habituation, the "you can always find it here so it's second nature" phenomenon mentioned in your post, is something you'd find interesting.
Jef has also launched a Humane Interface project on SourceForge, if you're interested in contributing to that.
Just repeat after yourself: "There is no such thing as redhat, there is no such thing as Redhat."
True, Redhat *sells* boxes of software. But what you're getting for your money is the support that comes with it. Right?
The problem is that Red Hat spends $700,000,000 buying dot-coms and compiler companies, and then their programmers tell me the reason why their software is so lacking in usability is that they can't afford to have a usability dept.
Just because a company makes money on Open Source support doesn't mean they are actually going to use that money to make their software more usable.
In a way, Gruber is right. As far as usability goes, there really is no such thing as Red Hat; the company has always been non-existant in that field.
KDE got it wrong in 1997 when the used the terminology "Directory" instead of "Folder" (which Apple got right in 1984), and then it took KDE seven years to finally change to the more consistent terminology (after much resistance and a few flamewars), and the KDE UI is still absolutely jammed with way too many options and visual clutter.
I could not think of a better example of a Free Software project that corroborates Gruber's view point than KDE.
The parent authors comments about GUI relation to technical stuff reminded me of something I posted several months back on Slashdot. I think it really needs yet another reposting.
--
About 9 months ago, Eric Raymond came to speak at my LUG. No matter what else I think of him, he's really intersting and a really good speaker. I wouldn't for a moment knock his entertainment value, no matter what else I might have to say about the guy.
However, there was this one point during this discussing at the dinner before his speech where me and several of the LUG members were talking with him about linux GUI's and the future of the Linux Desktop. Eric Raymond said something about the whole unix system of creating back ends first and then grafting GUI's on to those later.
My response: "But Eric, most usability experts recommend you design the interface first and then write the code".
His response: "then they're wrong."
My response: "But what if there's something that the backend folks didn't think of when they wrote there code that the GUI really needs? Or what if there's something in the back-end that just doesn't work once you add a GUI?"
His response: "then it needs to be fixed."
My response: "But what if so much code has already been written that no programmer wants to go back and make all the changes necessary to make it really work?"
His response: "then we've got a problem."
It was at this moment I realized two things:
1. The Open Source leadership is just stuck in command-line land as your typical rabid, BOFH linux zealot, and is just as clueless about designing desktop software and user interfaces. The leaders of Open Source are as desktopically bankrupt as their followers, and it is unbelievably disturbing that people like this are placed in charge of leading efforts to make alternatives to windows for non-technical users.
2. For Free Software/Open Source to succeed in being a viable alternative for non-programmers, it must be once and for all divorced from the Unix Culture. The concept of freely distributable and modifiable code must be seperated from the concept of The Unix Way.