I don't think it's bad to "look dull" (ie look like you'd expect a PIM to look like). Exciting-looking UI is also often confusing UI. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you obviously haven't seen enough half-finished MP3 players that are supposed to look like hi-fis. Bleh.
That would be the perfect time for a Linux distro that does a painless install/conversion for Windows users,
Drifting further off-topic, is there a Linux distro that can overwrite a Windows installation but preserve the same documents, using the existing filesystem? e.g. stuff you had in My Documents/Letters before installing would appear in ~/Letters afterwards?
Is this even feasible? I know Slackware, at least, can work on a FAT32 partition.
This would be the holy grail of massmarket Linux distros. Bonus points for importing IE bookmarks into Mozilla, Outlook Express setup into KDE etc.
Ideally what you want is a distro that you can install while the Windows user is out at the shops, and by the time they get back, their PC would be running Linux and they *wouldn't notice*.
OK, I can see why Apple want to limit the number of hardware configurations possible, so they wouldn't ship it barebones - but why don't they make an entry level, pizza-box Mac that you can plug into commodity monitors?
Visited Slashdot links look just like the rest of the story text on my browser, for some reason, causing me to miss the second link since I've obviously read the article before.
Re:The percentage of Safari Users that would use t
on
Hyatt Discusses Tabs
·
· Score: 1
... this feature which causes interface clutter (even though minimal, it is is evasive)...
If you see everything on your screen that's not part of a document as clutter, then tabs add (marginally) to clutter.
But using tabs takes the list of active web documents out of the Taskbar/Dock/etc., where other documents and programs are listed. So your interface becomes easier to understand at a glance and less cluttered.
I don't buy into the assumption that you MUST browse the web with the biggest percentage of your screen possible devoted to rendering HTML (although you are in good company, as even Jakob Nielsen has complained about this recently - "it's amazing how much space is spent on browser chrome, scrollbars, and other system overhead"). Tabs, history panes, toolbars and the like, take up a relatively small amount of the screen but offer serious improvements in navigation. At today's typical screen resolutions, few sites look better if they're filling the whole screen.
In cases where it is important to see only the document, browsers should allow one-button "full screen" modes. Opera and Phoenix do this, for example.
Wouldn't hiring a competent subeditor pay for itself by making people more likely to subscribe? It's a bit insulting to your subscribers to be running a commercial site with the same editorial standards as alt.spank.tonya.harding, isn't it?
The responses saying that you can just look up this information yourself are missing the point - if you are representing yourself or researching a legal threat you have received to see if it's worth hiring a lawyer, accessing this sort of information in a timely way is critical.
If these companies can't provide access at reasonable rates (note that the libraries ARE offering to pay for the companies' work), isn't there a case for the government to (threaten to) provide a similar free service, for the public good? That would incidentally put the companies out of business, but that's too bad. They're basing their services on documents that the state provides.
Hmmm, hidden database integration features that most users don't even know they have installed? Does this sound like a bad idea to anyone? It sounds like the helpful scripting/macro 'features' that cause so much trouble with MS Office. Could someone writes some kind of worm to exploit this? Maybe an OpenOffice document that wrecks your local database?
I don't know anything about OpenOffice's security model, mind you, so I could be talking rubbish.
Even if you don't want to use a commercial browser, the existence of Opera is a good thing for projects like Mozilla.
Let me explain: Opera have shown their willingness to innovate and add new features to their browser. And they're good at it. Many of their ideas are very useful, *and* they're designed to benefit the user rather than create new "standards" to try and lock in developers.
Opera promoted the ideas of tabbed browsing and mouse gestures, ideas that were taken up by many Gecko-based browsers. The new release adds and intelligent "forward" button, understanding of navigational META tags, and small screen rendering.
If you watch Moz and Phoenix, you will see the influence of Opera - for example, the demand for Opera-style "rocker" gestures (using mouse button combos rather than movement) to be added to the gesture extensions.
Now, I'm not saying that Open Source projects should only clone and never innovate - and in fact, there are many innovations in Mozilla (pie menu navigation and type ahead find, for example). But Opera is a useful source of good interface ideas, and the company is not taking out bogus patents to "protect" them.
Software is one thing, but online content is something else. Honestly, how many large "media files" have you seen that are licensed under an "Open Content" license?
They don't have to be "Open" as in freely modifiable. They could be licensed under a Creative Commons 'redistribution without modification' licence. That would make perfect sense for movie trailers, game videos etc. It would end the stupidity of movie studios parking their trailers on apple.com, and games sites requiring paid "premium" accounts to download ads which are basically advertising.
Also, people putting out videos of their autonomous Lego stegosaurus or whatever could use this.
The simple solution is to have a special "troll" flag on accounts. When someone is flagged as a troll, they can post as normal, but *only they can see their posts*.
Hopefully, they will think they're being ignored and go away. Even if not, it means they aren't sure when to reregister.
Isn't this kind of ideology exactly what let to the 'dot-com crash'. People invested lots of capital in companies that people enjoyed but weren't necessarily very profitable. I think google is the latest subject to this phenomenon. Although I could be,and hope that I am, wrong.
I don't think it's comparable.
Google is making a profit now, not operating on the hopes of future revenue. And it's not even IPO'd yet. And I think a lot of failed dotcoms offered services that were actually useless or impossible to run at a profit.
Interesting how the one system that might have provided independent evidence of election fraud happened to go down during the very election when the Bush junta seized power.
The problem with the Open Source programs that I've used is not that features are unoriginal (not a problem in itself) but lack of polish/integration.
KMail is a decent mail client, but to get it to work properly (after installing it as part of Mandrake 7.2) I had to search Usenet to find out that I had to edit some config files. That's not what someone coming from Outlook Express would expect, and it would probably put them off.
Making initial config and installation easy should be more of a priority than adding "original" features.
That said, Mozilla has done both, so it can be done.
Slashdot Mirror
Editors, editors. How is it possible that you can write Perl but you can't get this right?
Just apply the regexp \s///'/\ ... no, hold on ... oh, never mind.
The dinosaur-themed skins will be in v2.0.
I don't think it's bad to "look dull" (ie look like you'd expect a PIM to look like). Exciting-looking UI is also often confusing UI. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you obviously haven't seen enough half-finished MP3 players that are supposed to look like hi-fis. Bleh.
Drifting further off-topic, is there a Linux distro that can overwrite a Windows installation but preserve the same documents, using the existing filesystem? e.g. stuff you had in My Documents/Letters before installing would appear in ~/Letters afterwards?
Is this even feasible? I know Slackware, at least, can work on a FAT32 partition.
This would be the holy grail of massmarket Linux distros. Bonus points for importing IE bookmarks into Mozilla, Outlook Express setup into KDE etc.
Ideally what you want is a distro that you can install while the Windows user is out at the shops, and by the time they get back, their PC would be running Linux and they *wouldn't notice*.
I think there's a need for a "naming software projects HOWTO", covering:
http://archive.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/technology/1 0POWE.html
OK, I can see why Apple want to limit the number of hardware configurations possible, so they wouldn't ship it barebones - but why don't they make an entry level, pizza-box Mac that you can plug into commodity monitors?
Rockstar? Grand Theft Auto 1? Hello?
Sorry.
Visited Slashdot links look just like the rest of the story text on my browser, for some reason, causing me to miss the second link since I've obviously read the article before.
Move along please. Nothing to see here.
Don't link to the science index page - link directly to the story, silly. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2846897.stm
If you see everything on your screen that's not part of a document as clutter, then tabs add (marginally) to clutter.
But using tabs takes the list of active web documents out of the Taskbar/Dock/etc., where other documents and programs are listed. So your interface becomes easier to understand at a glance and less cluttered.
I don't buy into the assumption that you MUST browse the web with the biggest percentage of your screen possible devoted to rendering HTML (although you are in good company, as even Jakob Nielsen has complained about this recently - "it's amazing how much space is spent on browser chrome, scrollbars, and other system overhead"). Tabs, history panes, toolbars and the like, take up a relatively small amount of the screen but offer serious improvements in navigation. At today's typical screen resolutions, few sites look better if they're filling the whole screen.
In cases where it is important to see only the document, browsers should allow one-button "full screen" modes. Opera and Phoenix do this, for example.
Just enable "Continue browsing where I was last time" in File -> Preferences -> Start and Exit.
What next - "Google has more"?
You can buy a limited edition print of Crick and Watson with the original DNA model here.
Wouldn't hiring a competent subeditor pay for itself by making people more likely to subscribe? It's a bit insulting to your subscribers to be running a commercial site with the same editorial standards as alt.spank.tonya.harding, isn't it?
There was definitely no region system in the GBA - I've played US games on my UK/Europe version.
If these companies can't provide access at reasonable rates (note that the libraries ARE offering to pay for the companies' work), isn't there a case for the government to (threaten to) provide a similar free service, for the public good? That would incidentally put the companies out of business, but that's too bad. They're basing their services on documents that the state provides.
Of course, the government would never do this in a country where commercial publishers can shut down government sites just by asking nicely.
I don't know anything about OpenOffice's security model, mind you, so I could be talking rubbish.
Let me explain: Opera have shown their willingness to innovate and add new features to their browser. And they're good at it. Many of their ideas are very useful, *and* they're designed to benefit the user rather than create new "standards" to try and lock in developers.
Opera promoted the ideas of tabbed browsing and mouse gestures, ideas that were taken up by many Gecko-based browsers. The new release adds and intelligent "forward" button, understanding of navigational META tags, and small screen rendering.
If you watch Moz and Phoenix, you will see the influence of Opera - for example, the demand for Opera-style "rocker" gestures (using mouse button combos rather than movement) to be added to the gesture extensions.
Now, I'm not saying that Open Source projects should only clone and never innovate - and in fact, there are many innovations in Mozilla (pie menu navigation and type ahead find, for example). But Opera is a useful source of good interface ideas, and the company is not taking out bogus patents to "protect" them.
videos, rather.
They don't have to be "Open" as in freely modifiable. They could be licensed under a Creative Commons 'redistribution without modification' licence. That would make perfect sense for movie trailers, game videos etc. It would end the stupidity of movie studios parking their trailers on apple.com, and games sites requiring paid "premium" accounts to download ads which are basically advertising.
Also, people putting out videos of their autonomous Lego stegosaurus or whatever could use this.
Hopefully, they will think they're being ignored and go away. Even if not, it means they aren't sure when to reregister.
I don't think it's comparable.
Google is making a profit now, not operating on the hopes of future revenue. And it's not even IPO'd yet. And I think a lot of failed dotcoms offered services that were actually useless or impossible to run at a profit.
While I take your point about stirring up competition, it's worth mentioning that Mozilla is way ahead on features compared to IE.
Tabbed browsing, Type Ahead find, mouse gestures etc.
</paranoia>
KMail is a decent mail client, but to get it to work properly (after installing it as part of Mandrake 7.2) I had to search Usenet to find out that I had to edit some config files. That's not what someone coming from Outlook Express would expect, and it would probably put them off.
Making initial config and installation easy should be more of a priority than adding "original" features.
That said, Mozilla has done both, so it can be done.