Konqueror is still having problems handling GMail (read Google Talk in it)
That's what I thought too.
Then I changed my browser identification in GMail to be Mozilla/5.0 and then it suddenly worked.
Apparently Google are screwing up with Konqueror by checking the browser id. I don't suppose they do this out of bad intentions, but they prefer the site reverting to HTML than not working cryptically.
Hezbollah didn't fire on israeli civillian targets till after israel struck the airport. Hezbollah was acting like a responsible military force and targetting the military. Israel responded by comitting war crimes.
That's a lie too. Hezbollah shelled northern Israeli cities immediately before the abduction, as well as in random spurs during the last 6 years.
Besides which israel killed a thousand civillians and left a million people homeless. The fact that you don't find that repugnant tells a lot about you.
War is repugnant. Hezbollah started this war.
How many civilians died in World War II, and how many left homeless? Does this mean World War II was an unjust war? Does this mean the British and Americans were war criminals? No, in war civilians die.
Like airports, bridges, roads, milk factories, water treatment plants, television stations, electrical facilities right? I have news for you just because it's possible for a member of hezbollah to drive on the road or cross a bridge or to drink some water that does not give you the right to destroy something that's used by civillians.
If Hezbollah use the airport and bridge to transfer the abductees away from Israeli reach, it sure does. Funny that you mention "Television stations" when obviously you refer to Hezbollah's TV station.
Airport was a perfect example of this. There were no hezbollah at the airtport, israel killed 50 people waiting for planes.
Airport could be used to bring weapons, to fly the abductees away, or to bring in other forms of support for Hezbollah fighting, which translates to Israeli casualties. Israel will obviously try to minimize its causalties in a war, even before trying to minimize civilian casualties of the enemy.
The fact that you don't find that repugnant tells a lot about you.
Who says I don't? It doesn't matter if its repugnant or not. To keep the peace, one must fight wars. When fighting wars, people, including civilians, die.
I oppose the israeli slaughter of civillians period. I also oppose the israeli occupation of palestine, the israeli torture of human beings, the israeli stealing of land etc.
AGAIN you evade the question. AGAIN you evade whether or not you'd support World War II. Amazing!
If you don't support the allies in World War II, then you're an idiot. If you do support the allies in World War II, then you support Israel in this conflict.
The fact that you don't oppose any of these tells a lot about you.
I don't oppose just wars, despite the fact they always kill civilians.
What the hell are you talking about. Every year they launch missilies and kill women and children indiscrimantely.
No. You are confused. Hamas kills women and children indescriminately. Israel kills Palestinian militants. Now, sometimes the women and children that are also in the house, behind which the militants are hiding, also die. Sometimes that happens, and Israel avoids that, even sometimes giving up on opportunities to kill large-scale terrorists. But the intel is not always accurate, and sometimes women and children are around the militants or sometimes there's just no other way to get rid of the threat.
The palestenians have the right to arm themselves, they have the right to transport arms from one part of their country to another, they have the right to defend themselves against israel stealing their land.
They don't have any right to arm themselves, when those arms are used against Israel. What kind of fool are you? Would any country let its enemies arm themselves freely with arms that have an obvious intent to be used to murder you?
Again, you are confused, Israel is only giving back land now.
NO you are not. YOu are completely clueless.
No, I have gaps in my knowledge, and so do everybody. The difference between me and you, is that when there is a gap in my knowledge,
Israelis cannot use shortcuts when writing English/Hebrew documents.
I present this problem, and instead of presenting a solution, what you have to say is that you are a silly little person who has nothing intelligent to say. That's just great!
Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers on lebanese soil. Israel retaliated by bombing the airport and killing 49 civillians which is a war crime. I am all for defending yourself but you are for killing civillians in response to attacking military targets.
Talk about lies! Even the Hezbollah did not claim it was on Lebanese soil. It was on Israeli soil, in internationally recognized Israeli borders.
And no, Hezbollah didn't just kidnap 2 soldiers. Hezbollah:
Killed 5 soldiers
Kidnapped 2 soldiers
Opened fire on Israeli military and civilian targets
Israel attacked civilian infrastructure as part of a war, while attempting to minimize casualties. It was all about harming the mobility of Hezbollah (thus Bridges, airport) which was obviously crucial at the time. If Israel wanted to harm civilians, many many thousands would be dead in the first hours of the war.
Hezbollah shot at both military and civilian targets, and that is an act of war, as recognized not only by Israel, but also by the UN and even the arab nations!
Israel attacks civllians in response to military strikes.
Israel attacked both Hezbollah and civilian infrastructure in use by Hezbollah. Also, Israel attacked the homes that hosted Hezbollah's fire towards Israel.
Nope, they arrested two soldiers which were in their country illegally.
Where the heck do you bring this crap from? Even Hezbollah admitted they entered Israeli territory to kidnap the Israeli soldiers and kill 5 others!
They killed a thousand civillians and destroyed an entire country while only killing a handful of hezbollah.
Bullshit, Israel killed hundreds of Hezbollah men. You are buying Hezbollah's lies. Israel published a list of hundreds of names of dead Hezbollah men.
Israel used cluster bombs and 6000 lb bombs. That's hardly precision. If they were not total pussies they would have gone in there with people instead of using bombs in the first place. If they were not aiming for civillians then they are the most inept force in the history of manking.
Israel used large bombs too, but in the minority of cases. Israel used them on a known HQ building of Hezbollah, hosting a meeting of Hezbollah leaders. That's a very justifiable act of war. If Israel sent ground troops in earlier, it would not have minimized civilian casualties whatsoever, but it would get a lot more Israeli troops killed. So what's the point?
What financial effort? All their arms come from welfare from the US. We give them the aid so they can buy the weapons from us.
Israel gets US aid dollars with which it can buy things. It chooses to buy precision bombs and not stupid bombs - in order to more effectively target militia, and spare innocent lives.
That's been proven to be a lie already so no need to discuss this.
Huh? That's been proven true with video shots of Hezbollah's weaponry inside mosques, houses, and neighborhoods. CNN reporters also report that when reporting in Lebanon, Hezbollah people control exactly what the cameraman film, and destroy the tapes of those who filmed whatever it is Hezbollah did not want.
I oppose the israeli slaughter of civillians period. I also oppose the israeli occupation of palestine, the israeli torture of human beings, the israeli stealing of land etc.
Great, you keep avoiding the real questions. So in World War II, you'd let Hitler take over Europe, and most of Asia, because you must "think of the poor German children who die!".
Barely. They are the majority in the west bank and gaza by a long shot. Very soon they will be the majority when you add israel.
What the heck does that have to do with anything?? They are the majority in Gaza and they have their own parliament and government in Gaza. How soon will 3.5 million people become 6.5 million people? I think Israel will disengage from them comple
But what makes you think that Ctrl-(4th key from the left, 3rd key from the top) is going to be an appropriate keycode? On my US QWERTY keyboard it is "F", but on a US Dvorak keyboard it is "U". Even without internationalization you've just screwed up the lives US Dvorak users who want to press Ctrl-F to bring up the Find dialog.
Our motor/muscle memory is what's important, not the symbolic memory.
If you're still thinking "... I need find.. hmm.. find[0]->'f', AH, it must be Ctrl+F" then it must be faster to use a menu or icon. Shortcut keys are for faster access. It doesn't matter WHAT key it is, as long as it doesn't break when switching languages and that it is not context sensitive. i.e: I don't have to look at what language I am and then choose the shortcut according to the correct language, not to mention remember the shortcut in the various languages.
Dvorak users will easily handle Ctrl-U as "find", just like they handle Ctrl-V as "paste". I don't think this will "screw their lives". Writing a Hebrew document, switching to an English word and then trying to use a shortcut which doesn't work because I'm in English mode temporarily - now that's closer to screwing up my life, or at least my sanity:-)
If you translate key shortcuts, then you DO NOT have worry about shortcuts breaking when you switch languages. You have to translate the menu items anyway, so what's so freaking hard about translating the shortcuts at the same time?
Wait a minute here. Say my Microsoft Word is in English. It has a shortcut key, Alt-F for "File" menu.
I write an English document. I switch to Hebrew to write one Hebrew word. I am still in Hebrew. Now I want to open the "File" menu, what do I need to do? (Remember its supposed to be a "shortcut" key).
"I believe in the equality of all human beings, but also in the right of a nation to defend itself against attacks."
Unless of course they are palestenians defending against people stealing their lands or lebanese or syrians, or iraqis, or iranians right? I mean arabs don't have the right to defend themselves because they are not white. Only jews have the right to defend themselves.
Notice that all along in this argument you are the only one who brings up the issue of race or color. So who is the racist again?
If the Lebanese are attacked they have a right to defend themselves. But the Lebanese are not attacked, because Israel does not attack countries. The Lebanese attacked Israel, not the other way around. So Israel invoked its right to defend itself and went on a mission to destroy the attackers. That's the difference between offense and defense. Its simple enough for you to understand (I think).
Israel does not attack the Iraqis, or the Syrians, or anyone else either.
The Palestinians are not attacking because of land theft. They are attacking because they are raised in Hamas-controlled schools preaching hate. They are attacking because their families have a large financial incentive for them to do so. They are attacking because they are driven by hate. Kinda similar to the hate you seem to be exhibiting. Hate is easy to create, and difficult to remove. And it is easy to create mob hate against any party, by blaming all troubles on it, be it true or false. Israel is responsible for a lot of the Palestinian problems, but not as much as the leadership passing on the hatred is giving it credit for.
Besides that the jews may kill any number of civillians they want while defending themselves. For example if two jews get kidnapped then jews can in retaliation kill a thousand arabs and leave another million homeless because they are defending themselves.
I already explained this to you, but I'll try to make it simpler:
Israel attacks those who attack it.
Hezbollah attacked Israel.
Israel was not willing to surrender to Hezbollah attacks, and decided to free its men by means of force, and to crush Hezbollah.
Since Hezbollah attacked first, Israel is the defender.
The death or displacement of Lebanese civilians was not an Israeli goal and in fact Israel could buy cheap bombs that kill a lot of civilians, but instead Israel buys expensive precision bombs.
The precision bombs are bought with great financial effort, in order to minimize civilian casualties (unlike Hezbollah who shoot to kill civilians indescriminately).
Unfortunately, Hezbollah is hiding amongst civilians, so destroying them inevitably kills civilians.
Would you oppose World War II, because civilians got killed?
"Torture itself is obviously a bad thing, but in some contexts, it is the lesser evil."
Ah yes good old moral relativism. Torture is bad except when it's good. It's only good when done by white people against brown people right?
Its only good when it prevents worse evils (such as a terrorist bombing of a bus full of men, women and children). For example, the torture used in "24" by Pallmer. You still haven't answered the simple question: Do you support or do you not support the torture as used in "24"? If choosing the lesser evil is moral relativism, then yes, I am a moral relativist.
"Israel is not massacring civilians, and it never has. All of the accusations of massacres were always proven false after the fact."
BHAHAHAHAAHA. Man you made my day with that one.
Why don't you cite a source? The so-called "massacres" in Jenin and Qana were already shown to be false.
"With all respect to Mandella and Tutu, while they may know what "Apartheid" means, they don't know much about what actua
I am neither Jewish nor Chrisitian. I am an atheist.
I believe in the equality of all human beings, but also in the right of a nation to defend itself against attacks.
I don't believe in black and white morals.
Torture itself is obviously a bad thing, but in some contexts, it is the lesser evil.
I never admitted Israel steals land. In fact I repeatedly said Israel is giving back land.
Israel is not massacring civilians, and it never has. All of the accusations of massacres were always proven false after the fact.
With all respect to Mandella and Tutu, while they may know what "Apartheid" means, they don't know much about what actually goes on in Palestine.
In the Apartheid, for example, there weren't a lot of black people planning to suicide with bombs on them, in order to kill the whites. In the Apartheid, for example, the blacks were a majority. In the Apartheid, for example, the blacks were non-civilians and had no autonomous regime. In the Apartheid, for example, the blacks were not allowed to marry whites. In the Apartheid, for example, the blacks were not allowed to use "white busses".
The lines of similarity between the Apartheid and the Palestinian situation are much smaller than the lines of difference. The situation with Jews in arab nations, for example, much more resembles the Apartheid.
Basically every single fact about the Apartheid does not apply to the situation here, so why do you even bother?
Perpetual war is conducted by the arabs, and constantly it is the arabs who initiate war with Israel. When they lose, they blame Israel for war mongering, forgetting who it was who planned, initiated, and carried on with the violence.
"Mass kidnappings" and other baseless accusations will not get a serious consideration without any sources.
You know: Outragous accusations require outragous evidence.
Try to cite some facts and sources, not politicians who have their own agendas and interests.
You might discover that you have no sources, simply because your whole opinion is based in a single-sided view of the situation, some lies, and a lot of cherry-picking of the events that occured.
If the shortcut is Ctrl-(4th key from the left, 3rd key from the top), then the untranslated key code is exactly what you want.
I am asserting that such key shortcuts are superior to symbolic shortcuts where the symbol is the shortcut and it breaks when you switch input languages.
You mean other then refugee camps, devestating poverty, and lack of human rights? Anyway both Mandella and Tutu have been to both locations and can make a sound judgement about it. As a jewish supremacists you are not allowed to consider that they are capable of making such a comparison.
Mandella and Tutu are politicians that like you, may have some idea about the Apartheid, but have no idea whatsoever about what goes on in the Palestinian territories.
You do realize that the refugee camps are what the Palestinians based, and that there is a lot of money flowing in, even from Israel, to the Palestinians, but instead of setting up nice cities and residential areas, they use it for their corruption and to buy weapons?
Property, again, is only devestated as part of the war that the Palestinians are forcing on Israel.
You really should go look "supremacists" in the dictionary, little boy.
Which arab nation has veto rights?
A veto right is not necessary to pass resolutions. All it takes is controlling all oil sources and a huge part of the world economy.
"Israel does not want to occupy the Palestinians"
Lie
You have no idea, so why do you bother talking? Do you know what Ehud Olmert, recently elected, was elected about? Do you know what was his proposed plan at all??
"Lie, lie, lie"
Yeah, you are very convincing now. No, YOU lie. How is that? Oooh, so convincing.
"Israel is working on stopping the occupation"
Lie.
The facts speak for themselves. But why would you want to complicate yourself with the facts?
Are your pants on fire yet Mr Jewish supremacist.
Like any other racist pig you probably believe all that shit. Just like the neo nazis believe that white people are genetically superior.
You really really should go do some reading. The actual facts may surprise you.
Yes. Both Nelson Mandella and Bishop Desmond Tutu know a little about apartheid. But who am I kidding. I am talking to a racist pig. You probably don't even consider them human beings.
And yet you can't show a single line of similarity between Israel and the apartheid. As I said, your whole standing and opinion is based in what you heard from others, and you have no idea what the actual facts are. You feel free to be a judge of a case you have no facts on.
IN that case the israeli experiment should be ended. A country which can only exist as long as they don't obey international law should not be allowed to exist. By saying that you are admitting that the israeli expirent is a failure.
There's a difference between UN resolutions and "international law". The UN is not an impartial organization, and its standing is affected by political interests and by the power of the Arab nations.
Israel obeys international law, but the UN resolutions which are out of line will not be obeyed.
You know. The ones where they are not allowed to be tortured and they are to be granted basic human dignitiy. That one.
They are granted self government, and torture is only used against time-ticking human bombs who have a proven track record of operating murderous operations. So what dignity and torture are you talking about exactly?
I am especially happy to see you excuse torture and occupation and a thirty year war against the people you are occupying. I guess that's all part and parcel of the jewish religion huh? I guess the god of the jews has no problems with torture or killing or apartheid.
Israel does not want to occupy the Palestinians, and it does not want to use torture. Israel rarely uses torture as a last resort to prevent a terrorist bombing killing dozens of innocent civilians. The torture targets are always proven murderous terrorists. Israel is working on stopping the occupation, but if the Palestinians had ceased their violence, then the occupation would long be over. Each time Israel retreats from any occupied territory, the Palestinians use that area as a source for terrorist activity.
Your posts show exactly how morally corrupt the jewish supremacists are.
Your post show how ignorant fools are filling the internet with blatant nonsense.
No idea? Uh see the scrollbar on the right? That tells you where you are and you can use it to control where you are.
You are missing the point.
If I have to divert my eyes, and research where I am, comparing to a remembered scroll bar position, in order to know where I moved by the search - then I am wasting a few seconds, which is a hell of a lot longer than the 0.2 seconds I wait for an animation before I can read.
Overlapping windows are used to make more information available to the user than can be displayed on the available screen real estate. The RL metaphor is a collection of papers on a desk. You can't see every paper all at once, but you bring to the top of the pile those which you need. You do this for your own benefit, based on the needs of the moment, not for that of the desk -- or the computer. The whole point is that the space isn't tiled. I don't like working that way personally, and I suspect the reason we've moved away from that model is because most people don't. Remember the early Windows versions?
I don't believe in designing GUI's based on real-life metaphores. Its just not possible to have the papers on my desk automatically tile themselves according to my needs. Maybe that's why I'm not using papers anymore, but a computer. Ofcourse you can't see everything at once, and I don't think automatic tiling should try to show you everything (as it currently does in current menus, making it useless). I believe that you should tell the computer, with a few gestures, which windows (or better, which parts of which windows) what's important to you now, and what's not. Example gestures could be double-right-click or middle-click, or visible clickable areas. Then the computer should tile the windows such that the more important data is visible. You could add a feature based on an excellent suggestion of someone on this discussion, of automatic zoom-in/zoom-out of windows such that what's currently important fits. Ofcourse as you work you readjust what's important and what's not, and the computer rearranges the window. Note that if this rearrangement is jerky (via a single screen refresh) it will not be usable, and it must use a quick visible smooth movement for the rearrangement so you aren't disoriented by it.
You asked how much of the screen was empty space and therefore wasted? Very little of it, most likely. Very little of mine is as I type. Space with no content in it is not necessarily wasted. In fact, it most likely isn't. Space is crucial to how our brains orgainize what we see. If every square inch of space on the screen was being used, we'd see it as a jumbled mess. The best and most eye-pleasing data presentation use of designs very carefully balance empty space against that occupied by content. Take, for example, your original post against my reply. See how I create spaces between my paragraphs with properly structured P tags? See how much more readable that is?
Spacing is a special type of symbol, which allows for logical separation to be expressed, and I agree it is important. But saying that gray areas are used for this purpose, is simply wrong. Take a look at arbitrary random screenshots, and you will find that most of the screen is showing gray semi-rectangular areas that are not even separating anything from anything else, they're just a product of misarrangement. Proper arrangement of windows is so tedious that only when you absolutely must see both windows at once, you actually do this. This is evidence that the model is not working efficiently.
About my lacking paragraphs, point taken.:-)
I never claimed to be a talented English writer.
I agree that some programs are badly designed and make poor use of the model. That doesn't mean the model itself is broken. Yes, it would be nice for those very particular about their screen arrangements if they could save state between sessions and recover it immediately when they start back up again. This is an implementation issue 00 remembering, of course, that most people prefer not to tile.
Persistency of the arrangement is not the issue. The simple tediousness of arranging is the problem. The fact is that what governs our actual arrangement of windows on screen is very little data (which widgets are important, which aren't -- a few booleans, and in cases of large text sections and images, there's perhaps another coordinate, of how much of the text/image
I think your point here has been misunderstood. I presume you mean that if you change from English to French that your keymap changes from QWERTY to AZERTY also and now [CTRL]-Z is no longer all in the bottom left, though your muscle memory is. A more extreme example is GA_IE where there is no Z in the alphabet. In the event that keyboards are every produced exclusivly for GA_IE it will be the undoing of us!
Indeed. Here in Israel, when I switch from English to Hebrew, none of the English keys are available in the Hebrew keyboard, and I have to switch languages for shortcut keys to work. I call them longcut keys:-P
Although this is a problem specific to Windows. Any decent GUI toolkit (even ones which were around 10 years ago or more) should allow application windows, and all GUI elements, to be resizeable by default. It is very frustrating that Windows is so bad at this.
You addressed the second part of my point. The first part, where you still have to resize things even when there is an optimal arrangement in which you can see all of the information on a single screenful or space available, stands even in the most modern Gtk+ and Qt versions.
1. It's not bankrupt at all. Overlapping windows are very useful in filtering out which data you're currently paying attention to. I'm not the only one who is more productive without the distraction of superfluous information. On my Mac I run Backdrop, which is simply a solid black window which I bring to the front to cover windows I'm not working with. Additionally, I run SpiritedAway which hides windows that are idle. I can quickly add windows to an exception list to prevent this from happening when it's undesirable. In truth, I wish more applications had a fullscreen mode, without extraneous window boundaries and menu bars.
Its not the overlap that's useful, its the arrangement of multiple windows. The computer can arrange the windows for you. You can do the easy part (click or gesture "This is important", "this is not") and the computer can do the hard part of resizing and moving things around.
2. Obviously this is largely related to mnemonics over position. How do you determine what keyboard layout gets the most symbolic shortcut layout while the rest are merely positional? That said, shortcut keys are there to provide quick access to common actions, not inductive/intuitive paths.
Shortcut keys are to be remembered. They ingrain themselves in the human motoric memory, or they are not faster or more useful. When they are there, it doesn't matter if its Ctrl-s, or Alt-NumPad1, as long as its consistent and universal, and not dependent on which language I'm currently in.
4. Plenty of GUIs have smooth scrolling or transitional animations. Some are intrusive, some are appealing, but in general, once people are doing a task repetitively they are impatient and want it to happen quickly and crisply. With the exception of tracking moving objects, our eyes jump around and jerk quickly, so we're completely suited to it. Plenty of people feel very comfortable with the speed of a jerky page up/page down and find scrollbars tedious.
Tracking moving objects, as you said, is what our brain is well suited at. The jerking around completely destroys this ability. I believe most smooth-scrolls and other smooth animations until today were simply done incorrectly and too slowly. A correct implementation would start moving at a high speed, and slow down near the end, so that for about 0.3 of the 0.5 seconds of the scroll you can already read the text although its moving. The brain is very good at deciphering movement like this, and kpdf's search is a great example of this feature.
Unless you're using an extremely poor window manager, it hides the gray areas. Either that or you need to go into your KDE or Gnome preferences where you can specify this.
What are you using? IIRC this was considered a significant innovation in window managers when I was finishing college in the 90s; but certainly hasn't been a problem for at least a decade.
I use Windows at the office and KDE at home. Indeed KDE does not overlap windows when it doesn't have to, and this is a great improvement, but it still has problems:
It only places new windows in correct positions. It does not maintain their correctness as windows get created and deleted.
Being a window manager, and not knowing what goes on inside windows, it doesn't know what space is wasted inside windows.
The second point would require a large architectural change to fix, but I believe it is worth it. I believe the GUI should be aware of the entire widget hierarchy, and not just the top-level windows. Then it should be possible to use unused space not just at the window-level.
If you use Qt, it is trivial to translate shortcuts. They are like any other string. Wrap them in tr(), use lupdate utility to extract all those strings, then send the result off to your translators.
This is not a solution, it is a workaround. It has to be done correctly in for every key in every language, and takes enough work that it isn't really done.
The real solution is that key presses generate events containing the untranslated key code pressed, not the unicode character of the current language, and that is used for shortcut activation.
But 4? I prefer jumpiness. When I want something to happen, I want the computer to do it NOW, not do some silly animation before it does it.
The animations are not meant to be "cute" or slow things down. In fact they can be very fast, as demonstrated by kpdf's search feature.
The animations are meant to make use of the human brain's great capacity to discern visual movement when it is not jumpy.
This capacity is completely wasted in today's UI's because they jump too fast for the brain to track what happened, and you get disoriented.
The most disorienting example, I believe, is when you search for text in a document, and it scrolls horizontally and vertically as part of that search. You have absolutely no idea where you are after that happens. This is even far worse when the search is incremental, and the screen jumps completely with every letter or backspace you press.
What's gray space? ( a) You make each of the windows small enough to tile them. That makes editing harder as you see less of the image.
b) You let the windows overlap as you can only edit one image at a time.
I don't know about you but b) sounds a lot more attractive to me...
You should be able to tell the computer what you want to see. If its more important for you to see the first image in full than to see the second image at all, then just tell the computer "this part is important", "this is not" (with about 2 gestures), rather than clicking and dragging about 5 times to tell the computer the same information more redundantly.
What? I have no idea what you're talking about, honestly. And yes, I do use both localized and non-localized software. Very few programs (usually older games) assume that 'z' always is next to 'y'.
Localized software often uses Ctrl-[random key here] for save, because that random key, in that particular localized language, happens to be the first letter of the word "save" in that particular language. I want uniform, non-language-dependent shortcut keys. I want ctrl-s to work in all programs and no matter what language I'm in now.
Qué? I know, list boxes and comboboxes are similar, but they're distinctive enough to each have merit. I don't know what else you could be talking about.
I have replied to this point in various other posts.
You make your GUI smoothscroll everywhere, but leave mine in peace. When I use PageDn I want to get somewhere quickly. Smoothscrolling yould be decidedly counterproductive. In most other cases the same thing applies.
Again, smooth scrolling can be fast. See kpdf's search as an example.
So it's you against The World on the subject of how a UI ought to work. Hmm, I wonder who is more likely to be right.
I wonder if you are a Buddhist or a Christian.
1. The computer has no way of knowing, other than via user input, which information is important, and needs to be made viewable. I actually prefer to manually set the size and placement of my windows exactly the way I want them, because I know better than the computer does what I'm trying to accomplish.
That's true. You know better than the computer what you want to accomplish, or in this case "see". You know why? Because there's currently no way to tell the computer what you want to see. Telling the computer which information you want to see takes a lot less bandwidth (and thus a lot less mouse clicks) than telling the computer how to arrange the windows so you see them all. If you actually told the computer which information you wanted to see, by clicking it in a special way (for example, allocate the mid-button, or right-double-click or something), then it could know exactly what you're trying to accomplish and arrange the windows so that they show you valuable data, and not gray pixels.
2. You're complaining about an edge case. The vast majority of users will only ever use a computing system in their own native language. It doesn't matter to me that the Spanish term for "Save" doesn't start with 's'; in English, Ctrl+S maps nicely to "Save".
I'm complaining about a very common case in my country. Here in Israel we intermix Hebrew and English all the time. I suspect this is true in almost all internationalized setups, because:
Many programs only expose English interfaces.
English is the "official" language on many subjects.
Many terms come from English.
Not only this, but some programs have Hebrew interfaces available, while some have English ones. So "Save" is sometimes "ctrl-s", and sometimes "ctrl-(Hebrew-shin)", which is ctrl-a.
When I press a shortcut key, it either:
Does not work because I'm in the wrong language.
Even worse: Does something else entirely because I'm in the wrong language.
A "shortcut key" is always remembered, because you have to know its function and which letter was chosen (often not the first letter is chosen). So it doesn't really matter if save is Ctrl-s, or "f2" (as it was in Borland), as long as its a consistent, universal key.
If I need to check which language I'm in, switch languages, and then switch back to press a shortcut key, it might as well be named a longcut key!
3. I am interested to know which UI widgets you feel are superfluous. Running through the common ones (text boxes, menus, radio buttons, sliders, et al) in my head, I find each one to have a reasonable logical and/or graphical justification for existing. So what confuses you?
Radiobuttons are redundant to icon-sets you choose from, and have no visual cue of where you can press. Sometimes pressing the text works, sometimes it doesn't. Tabs are redundant to "configuration listboxes" where you switch between listbox items and the whole window is replaced. Drop-down menus are redundant to simple windows containing the options. Combo-boxes are very annoying, in that they drop-down a tiny menu where often there are many options and the screen is, as usual, free. I need to scroll through that tiny space, and any mistake closes the menu and loses my scroll point.
4. I want a UI to react to my commands as quickly as possible. If I hit "page down", I want to see the next page now; I don't want to wait 2 seconds as the content smoothly scrolls to the new location. And if UIs were designed so that they did this, I suspect you'd be searching for the option to turn it back off as well.
The smooth scrolling, and other smooth movements can be very fast. See for example how kpdf (KDE's pdf reader) smooth scrolls when it finds text. It is MUCH more
I agree 100%. Jumpiness makes sense. Computer, and the programs and data that inhabit them, are not physical objects and do not behave like physical objects. UI gurus have been declaring for years that normal human beings cannot accept this and will never understand anything that was not familiar to humans on the savannahs of Africa 100,000 years ago.
Its not about "making sense", or behaving like physical objects at all.
Pointing out that a UI behavior has no counterpart in the "real" world says nothing about whether it will be difficult for people to understand and exploit the behavior. That argument has been discredited by years of experience.
Again, my argument has nothing to do with how things are in the real world.
The first bogeyman of this type was the word processor convention that text typed into a document was not permanent until the user asked for the file to be saved. This, it was said, would limit the use of word processing to a small group of slightly autistic subhumans who were willing to sacrifice their humanity and live by the machine's laws. (Or so it sounded to me.)
I never heard of this, and indeed I find the fact I have to click "save" quite an absurd waste of time. The default should be to keep data, not lose it. Irreversible acts, especially ones of loss, should be postponed as much as possible. In that regard, I also believe "deletion" should be replaced with "deprioritize the space" so that it is actually deleted only when that space is required again. Allowing undeletion for as long as possible without mucking around in a recycle bin.
This bizarre principle, discredited in practice, is still upheld by ideologues who believe that the tendency to create rational systems and mold the world to resemble them is somehow inhuman -- as if the engineers, scientists, car mechanics, accountants, and programmers of the world were not human beings expressing a deeply human trait but monsters weaving a toxic and alien thread into human society.
Its not about this either.
Who created the machines? In whose image were they made? A person who has no technical skill, who cannot program a VCR or learn the common GUI conventions, should not be considered more human for it, any more than a person should be considered more human for being unable to sing, dance, or make a child laugh.
I have no problem with computers offerring "non-intuitive" interfaces if they are more efficient. I have no will to make computers "more human" or "more akin to physical objects".
I want computers to have efficient interfaces.
Humans can learn almost anything, but some features of the human mind are innate and hard-wired into its functionality. Take visual processing for example - humans have an immense capacity for visual processing. But all non-blind humans have a much easier time discerning movement from smooth sliding across an area, than by an immediate jump.
The human mind actually has a built-in, hard-wired function in the brain of identifying graphical movement - and it doesn't work when things jump around, only when they smoothly slide around. This can easily and probably was scientifically tested.
If you are interested, I can write a small program to prove this to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Konqueror is still having problems handling GMail (read Google Talk in it)
That's what I thought too.
Then I changed my browser identification in GMail to be Mozilla/5.0 and then it suddenly worked.
Apparently Google are screwing up with Konqueror by checking the browser id.
I don't suppose they do this out of bad intentions, but they prefer the site reverting to HTML than not working cryptically.
Will you lose your freedom and your life to avoid the repugnant war?
No you would become a hypocrite and destroy milk factories and water treatment facilities if that's what it takes to beat your enemy in a war.
You are one of the self-rightous-as-long-as-it-doesnt-concern-me people, who look at all wars from aside and say: "Hey, stop that war, its evil!".
Its a good thing there weren't many of you around in World War II.
Hezbollah didn't fire on israeli civillian targets till after israel struck the airport. Hezbollah was acting like a responsible military force and targetting the military. Israel responded by comitting war crimes.
That's a lie too.
Hezbollah shelled northern Israeli cities immediately before the abduction, as well as in random spurs during the last 6 years.
Besides which israel killed a thousand civillians and left a million people homeless. The fact that you don't find that repugnant tells a lot about you.
War is repugnant. Hezbollah started this war.
How many civilians died in World War II, and how many left homeless?
Does this mean World War II was an unjust war? Does this mean the British and Americans were war criminals?
No, in war civilians die.
Like airports, bridges, roads, milk factories, water treatment plants, television stations, electrical facilities right? I have news for you just because it's possible for a member of hezbollah to drive on the road or cross a bridge or to drink some water that does not give you the right to destroy something that's used by civillians.
If Hezbollah use the airport and bridge to transfer the abductees away from Israeli reach, it sure does. Funny that you mention "Television stations" when obviously you refer to Hezbollah's TV station.
Airport was a perfect example of this. There were no hezbollah at the airtport, israel killed 50 people waiting for planes.
Airport could be used to bring weapons, to fly the abductees away, or to bring in other forms of support for Hezbollah fighting, which translates to Israeli casualties. Israel will obviously try to minimize its causalties in a war, even before trying to minimize civilian casualties of the enemy.
The fact that you don't find that repugnant tells a lot about you.
Who says I don't?
It doesn't matter if its repugnant or not.
To keep the peace, one must fight wars.
When fighting wars, people, including civilians, die.
I oppose the israeli slaughter of civillians period. I also oppose the israeli occupation of palestine, the israeli torture of human beings, the israeli stealing of land etc.
AGAIN you evade the question. AGAIN you evade whether or not you'd support World War II.
Amazing!
If you don't support the allies in World War II, then you're an idiot.
If you do support the allies in World War II, then you support Israel in this conflict.
The fact that you don't oppose any of these tells a lot about you.
I don't oppose just wars, despite the fact they always kill civilians.
What the hell are you talking about. Every year they launch missilies and kill women and children indiscrimantely.
No. You are confused. Hamas kills women and children indescriminately. Israel kills Palestinian militants. Now, sometimes the women and children that are also in the house, behind which the militants are hiding, also die. Sometimes that happens, and Israel avoids that, even sometimes giving up on opportunities to kill large-scale terrorists. But the intel is not always accurate, and sometimes women and children are around the militants or sometimes there's just no other way to get rid of the threat.
The palestenians have the right to arm themselves, they have the right to transport arms from one part of their country to another, they have the right to defend themselves against israel stealing their land.
They don't have any right to arm themselves, when those arms are used against Israel. What kind of fool are you? Would any country let its enemies arm themselves freely with arms that have an obvious intent to be used to murder you?
Again, you are confused, Israel is only giving back land now.
NO you are not. YOu are completely clueless.
No, I have gaps in my knowledge, and so do everybody.
The difference between me and you, is that when there is a gap in my knowledge,
However, I was referring to other types of scrolling:
Israelis cannot use shortcuts when writing English/Hebrew documents.
I present this problem, and instead of presenting a solution, what you have to say is that you are a silly little person who has nothing intelligent to say.
That's just great!
Talk about lies! Even the Hezbollah did not claim it was on Lebanese soil. It was on Israeli soil, in internationally recognized Israeli borders.
And no, Hezbollah didn't just kidnap 2 soldiers. Hezbollah:
Israel attacked civilian infrastructure as part of a war, while attempting to minimize casualties. It was all about harming the mobility of Hezbollah (thus Bridges, airport) which was obviously crucial at the time. If Israel wanted to harm civilians, many many thousands would be dead in the first hours of the war.
Hezbollah shot at both military and civilian targets, and that is an act of war, as recognized not only by Israel, but also by the UN and even the arab nations!
Israel attacks civllians in response to military strikes.
Israel attacked both Hezbollah and civilian infrastructure in use by Hezbollah. Also, Israel attacked the homes that hosted Hezbollah's fire towards Israel.
Nope, they arrested two soldiers which were in their country illegally.
Where the heck do you bring this crap from? Even Hezbollah admitted they entered Israeli territory to kidnap the Israeli soldiers and kill 5 others!
They killed a thousand civillians and destroyed an entire country while only killing a handful of hezbollah.
Bullshit, Israel killed hundreds of Hezbollah men. You are buying Hezbollah's lies. Israel published a list of hundreds of names of dead Hezbollah men.
Israel used cluster bombs and 6000 lb bombs. That's hardly precision. If they were not total pussies they would have gone in there with people instead of using bombs in the first place. If they were not aiming for civillians then they are the most inept force in the history of manking.
Israel used large bombs too, but in the minority of cases. Israel used them on a known HQ building of Hezbollah, hosting a meeting of Hezbollah leaders. That's a very justifiable act of war.
If Israel sent ground troops in earlier, it would not have minimized civilian casualties whatsoever, but it would get a lot more Israeli troops killed. So what's the point?
What financial effort? All their arms come from welfare from the US. We give them the aid so they can buy the weapons from us.
Israel gets US aid dollars with which it can buy things. It chooses to buy precision bombs and not stupid bombs - in order to more effectively target militia, and spare innocent lives.
That's been proven to be a lie already so no need to discuss this.
Huh? That's been proven true with video shots of Hezbollah's weaponry inside mosques, houses, and neighborhoods.
CNN reporters also report that when reporting in Lebanon, Hezbollah people control exactly what the cameraman film, and destroy the tapes of those who filmed whatever it is Hezbollah did not want.
I oppose the israeli slaughter of civillians period. I also oppose the israeli occupation of palestine, the israeli torture of human beings, the israeli stealing of land etc.
Great, you keep avoiding the real questions.
So in World War II, you'd let Hitler take over Europe, and most of Asia, because you must "think of the poor German children who die!".
Barely. They are the majority in the west bank and gaza by a long shot. Very soon they will be the majority when you add israel.
What the heck does that have to do with anything??
They are the majority in Gaza and they have their own parliament and government in Gaza.
How soon will 3.5 million people become 6.5 million people?
I think Israel will disengage from them comple
But what makes you think that Ctrl-(4th key from the left, 3rd key from the top) is going to be an appropriate keycode? On my US QWERTY keyboard it is "F", but on a US Dvorak keyboard it is "U". Even without internationalization you've just screwed up the lives US Dvorak users who want to press Ctrl-F to bring up the Find dialog.
.. find[0]->'f', AH, it must be Ctrl+F" then it must be faster to use a menu or icon.
:-)
Our motor/muscle memory is what's important, not the symbolic memory.
If you're still thinking "... I need find.. hmm
Shortcut keys are for faster access.
It doesn't matter WHAT key it is, as long as it doesn't break when switching languages and that it is not context sensitive. i.e: I don't have to look at what language I am and then choose the shortcut according to the correct language, not to mention remember the shortcut in the various languages.
Dvorak users will easily handle Ctrl-U as "find", just like they handle Ctrl-V as "paste". I don't think this will "screw their lives".
Writing a Hebrew document, switching to an English word and then trying to use a shortcut which doesn't work because I'm in English mode temporarily - now that's closer to screwing up my life, or at least my sanity
If you translate key shortcuts, then you DO NOT have worry about shortcuts breaking when you switch languages. You have to translate the menu items anyway, so what's so freaking hard about translating the shortcuts at the same time?
Wait a minute here. Say my Microsoft Word is in English. It has a shortcut key, Alt-F for "File" menu.
I write an English document. I switch to Hebrew to write one Hebrew word. I am still in Hebrew. Now I want to open the "File" menu, what do I need to do? (Remember its supposed to be a "shortcut" key).
No, its not.
"I believe in the equality of all human beings, but also in the right of a nation to defend itself against attacks."
Unless of course they are palestenians defending against people stealing their lands or lebanese or syrians, or iraqis, or iranians right? I mean arabs don't have the right to defend themselves because they are not white. Only jews have the right to defend themselves.
Notice that all along in this argument you are the only one who brings up the issue of race or color. So who is the racist again?
If the Lebanese are attacked they have a right to defend themselves.
But the Lebanese are not attacked, because Israel does not attack countries. The Lebanese attacked Israel, not the other way around. So Israel invoked its right to defend itself and went on a mission to destroy the attackers.
That's the difference between offense and defense. Its simple enough for you to understand (I think).
Israel does not attack the Iraqis, or the Syrians, or anyone else either.
The Palestinians are not attacking because of land theft. They are attacking because they are raised in Hamas-controlled schools preaching hate. They are attacking because their families have a large financial incentive for them to do so. They are attacking because they are driven by hate. Kinda similar to the hate you seem to be exhibiting.
Hate is easy to create, and difficult to remove.
And it is easy to create mob hate against any party, by blaming all troubles on it, be it true or false.
Israel is responsible for a lot of the Palestinian problems, but not as much as the leadership passing on the hatred is giving it credit for.
Besides that the jews may kill any number of civillians they want while defending themselves. For example if two jews get kidnapped then jews can in retaliation kill a thousand arabs and leave another million homeless because they are defending themselves.
I already explained this to you, but I'll try to make it simpler:
Would you oppose World War II, because civilians got killed?
"Torture itself is obviously a bad thing, but in some contexts, it is the lesser evil."
Ah yes good old moral relativism. Torture is bad except when it's good. It's only good when done by white people against brown people right?
Its only good when it prevents worse evils (such as a terrorist bombing of a bus full of men, women and children). For example, the torture used in "24" by Pallmer.
You still haven't answered the simple question: Do you support or do you not support the torture as used in "24"?
If choosing the lesser evil is moral relativism, then yes, I am a moral relativist.
"Israel is not massacring civilians, and it never has. All of the accusations of massacres were always proven false after the fact."
BHAHAHAHAAHA. Man you made my day with that one.
Why don't you cite a source?
The so-called "massacres" in Jenin and Qana were already shown to be false.
"With all respect to Mandella and Tutu, while they may know what "Apartheid" means, they don't know much about what actua
I am neither Jewish nor Chrisitian.
I am an atheist.
I believe in the equality of all human beings, but also in the right of a nation to defend itself against attacks.
I don't believe in black and white morals.
Torture itself is obviously a bad thing, but in some contexts, it is the lesser evil.
I never admitted Israel steals land. In fact I repeatedly said Israel is giving back land.
Israel is not massacring civilians, and it never has. All of the accusations of massacres were always proven false after the fact.
With all respect to Mandella and Tutu, while they may know what "Apartheid" means, they don't know much about what actually goes on in Palestine.
In the Apartheid, for example, there weren't a lot of black people planning to suicide with bombs on them, in order to kill the whites.
In the Apartheid, for example, the blacks were a majority.
In the Apartheid, for example, the blacks were non-civilians and had no autonomous regime.
In the Apartheid, for example, the blacks were not allowed to marry whites.
In the Apartheid, for example, the blacks were not allowed to use "white busses".
The lines of similarity between the Apartheid and the Palestinian situation are much smaller than the lines of difference. The situation with Jews in arab nations, for example, much more resembles the Apartheid.
Basically every single fact about the Apartheid does not apply to the situation here, so why do you even bother?
Perpetual war is conducted by the arabs, and constantly it is the arabs who initiate war with Israel. When they lose, they blame Israel for war mongering, forgetting who it was who planned, initiated, and carried on with the violence.
"Mass kidnappings" and other baseless accusations will not get a serious consideration without any sources.
You know: Outragous accusations require outragous evidence.
Try to cite some facts and sources, not politicians who have their own agendas and interests.
You might discover that you have no sources, simply because your whole opinion is based in a single-sided view of the situation, some lies, and a lot of cherry-picking of the events that occured.
I think we misunderstand each other.
If the shortcut is Ctrl-(4th key from the left, 3rd key from the top), then the untranslated key code is exactly what you want.
I am asserting that such key shortcuts are superior to symbolic shortcuts where the symbol is the shortcut and it breaks when you switch input languages.
I wonder why you think I am Jewish at all.
I also wonder why you take the words of politicians before the facts.
Maybe it is because you have a set agenda - and you won't let the facts distract you?
There is no reason to think that copyright is absolutely necessary for the creation of works.
Give lack of copyright 10 years.
If the enhanced freedom of society does not seem to outweigh the expected reduction in creation, then bring copyright back.
I seriously doubt, though, that after having 10 years without copyright, that any government would dare to bring it back.
It would be like the prohibition.
You mean other then refugee camps, devestating poverty, and lack of human rights? Anyway both Mandella and Tutu have been to both locations and can make a sound judgement about it. As a jewish supremacists you are not allowed to consider that they are capable of making such a comparison.
Mandella and Tutu are politicians that like you, may have some idea about the Apartheid, but have no idea whatsoever about what goes on in the Palestinian territories.
You do realize that the refugee camps are what the Palestinians based, and that there is a lot of money flowing in, even from Israel, to the Palestinians, but instead of setting up nice cities and residential areas, they use it for their corruption and to buy weapons?
Property, again, is only devestated as part of the war that the Palestinians are forcing on Israel.
You really should go look "supremacists" in the dictionary, little boy.
Which arab nation has veto rights?
A veto right is not necessary to pass resolutions. All it takes is controlling all oil sources and a huge part of the world economy.
"Israel does not want to occupy the Palestinians"
Lie
You have no idea, so why do you bother talking?
Do you know what Ehud Olmert, recently elected, was elected about? Do you know what was his proposed plan at all??
"Lie, lie, lie"
Yeah, you are very convincing now. No, YOU lie. How is that? Oooh, so convincing.
"Israel is working on stopping the occupation"
Lie.
The facts speak for themselves. But why would you want to complicate yourself with the facts?
Are your pants on fire yet Mr Jewish supremacist.
Like any other racist pig you probably believe all that shit. Just like the neo nazis believe that white people are genetically superior.
You really really should go do some reading. The actual facts may surprise you.
Yes. Both Nelson Mandella and Bishop Desmond Tutu know a little about apartheid. But who am I kidding. I am talking to a racist pig. You probably don't even consider them human beings.
And yet you can't show a single line of similarity between Israel and the apartheid.
As I said, your whole standing and opinion is based in what you heard from others, and you have no idea what the actual facts are.
You feel free to be a judge of a case you have no facts on.
IN that case the israeli experiment should be ended. A country which can only exist as long as they don't obey international law should not be allowed to exist. By saying that you are admitting that the israeli expirent is a failure.
There's a difference between UN resolutions and "international law". The UN is not an impartial organization, and its standing is affected by political interests and by the power of the Arab nations.
Israel obeys international law, but the UN resolutions which are out of line will not be obeyed.
You know. The ones where they are not allowed to be tortured and they are to be granted basic human dignitiy. That one.
They are granted self government, and torture is only used against time-ticking human bombs who have a proven track record of operating murderous operations.
So what dignity and torture are you talking about exactly?
I am especially happy to see you excuse torture and occupation and a thirty year war against the people you are occupying. I guess that's all part and parcel of the jewish religion huh? I guess the god of the jews has no problems with torture or killing or apartheid.
Israel does not want to occupy the Palestinians, and it does not want to use torture. Israel rarely uses torture as a last resort to prevent a terrorist bombing killing dozens of innocent civilians. The torture targets are always proven murderous terrorists.
Israel is working on stopping the occupation, but if the Palestinians had ceased their violence, then the occupation would long be over. Each time Israel retreats from any occupied territory, the Palestinians use that area as a source for terrorist activity.
Your posts show exactly how morally corrupt the jewish supremacists are.
Your post show how ignorant fools are filling the internet with blatant nonsense.
No idea? Uh see the scrollbar on the right? That tells you where you are and you can use it to control where you are.
You are missing the point.
If I have to divert my eyes, and research where I am, comparing to a remembered scroll bar position, in order to know where I moved by the search - then I am wasting a few seconds, which is a hell of a lot longer than the 0.2 seconds I wait for an animation before I can read.
Overlapping windows are used to make more information available to the user than can be displayed on the available screen real estate. The RL metaphor is a collection of papers on a desk. You can't see every paper all at once, but you bring to the top of the pile those which you need. You do this for your own benefit, based on the needs of the moment, not for that of the desk -- or the computer. The whole point is that the space isn't tiled. I don't like working that way personally, and I suspect the reason we've moved away from that model is because most people don't. Remember the early Windows versions?
:-)
I don't believe in designing GUI's based on real-life metaphores. Its just not possible to have the papers on my desk automatically tile themselves according to my needs. Maybe that's why I'm not using papers anymore, but a computer.
Ofcourse you can't see everything at once, and I don't think automatic tiling should try to show you everything (as it currently does in current menus, making it useless).
I believe that you should tell the computer, with a few gestures, which windows (or better, which parts of which windows) what's important to you now, and what's not. Example gestures could be double-right-click or middle-click, or visible clickable areas.
Then the computer should tile the windows such that the more important data is visible.
You could add a feature based on an excellent suggestion of someone on this discussion, of automatic zoom-in/zoom-out of windows such that what's currently important fits.
Ofcourse as you work you readjust what's important and what's not, and the computer rearranges the window.
Note that if this rearrangement is jerky (via a single screen refresh) it will not be usable, and it must use a quick visible smooth movement for the rearrangement so you aren't disoriented by it.
You asked how much of the screen was empty space and therefore wasted? Very little of it, most likely. Very little of mine is as I type. Space with no content in it is not necessarily wasted. In fact, it most likely isn't. Space is crucial to how our brains orgainize what we see. If every square inch of space on the screen was being used, we'd see it as a jumbled mess. The best and most eye-pleasing data presentation use of designs very carefully balance empty space against that occupied by content. Take, for example, your original post against my reply. See how I create spaces between my paragraphs with properly structured P tags? See how much more readable that is?
Spacing is a special type of symbol, which allows for logical separation to be expressed, and I agree it is important. But saying that gray areas are used for this purpose, is simply wrong. Take a look at arbitrary random screenshots, and you will find that most of the screen is showing gray semi-rectangular areas that are not even separating anything from anything else, they're just a product of misarrangement. Proper arrangement of windows is so tedious that only when you absolutely must see both windows at once, you actually do this. This is evidence that the model is not working efficiently.
About my lacking paragraphs, point taken.
I never claimed to be a talented English writer.
I agree that some programs are badly designed and make poor use of the model. That doesn't mean the model itself is broken.
Yes, it would be nice for those very particular about their screen arrangements if they could save state between sessions and recover it immediately when they start back up again. This is an implementation issue 00 remembering, of course, that most people prefer not to tile.
Persistency of the arrangement is not the issue. The simple tediousness of arranging is the problem. The fact is that what governs our actual arrangement of windows on screen is very little data (which widgets are important, which aren't -- a few booleans, and in cases of large text sections and images, there's perhaps another coordinate, of how much of the text/image
I think your point here has been misunderstood. I presume you mean that if you change from English to French that your keymap changes from QWERTY to AZERTY also and now [CTRL]-Z is no longer all in the bottom left, though your muscle memory is. A more extreme example is GA_IE where there is no Z in the alphabet. In the event that keyboards are every produced exclusivly for GA_IE it will be the undoing of us!
:-P
Indeed. Here in Israel, when I switch from English to Hebrew, none of the English keys are available in the Hebrew keyboard, and I have to switch languages for shortcut keys to work.
I call them longcut keys
Although this is a problem specific to Windows. Any decent GUI toolkit (even ones which were around 10 years ago or more) should allow application windows, and all GUI elements, to be resizeable by default. It is very frustrating that Windows is so bad at this.
You addressed the second part of my point.
The first part, where you still have to resize things even when there is an optimal arrangement in which you can see all of the information on a single screenful or space available, stands even in the most modern Gtk+ and Qt versions.
1. It's not bankrupt at all. Overlapping windows are very useful in filtering out which data you're currently paying attention to. I'm not the only one who is more productive without the distraction of superfluous information. On my Mac I run Backdrop, which is simply a solid black window which I bring to the front to cover windows I'm not working with. Additionally, I run SpiritedAway which hides windows that are idle. I can quickly add windows to an exception list to prevent this from happening when it's undesirable. In truth, I wish more applications had a fullscreen mode, without extraneous window boundaries and menu bars.
Its not the overlap that's useful, its the arrangement of multiple windows. The computer can arrange the windows for you. You can do the easy part (click or gesture "This is important", "this is not") and the computer can do the hard part of resizing and moving things around.
2. Obviously this is largely related to mnemonics over position. How do you determine what keyboard layout gets the most symbolic shortcut layout while the rest are merely positional? That said, shortcut keys are there to provide quick access to common actions, not inductive/intuitive paths.
Shortcut keys are to be remembered. They ingrain themselves in the human motoric memory, or they are not faster or more useful. When they are there, it doesn't matter if its Ctrl-s, or Alt-NumPad1, as long as its consistent and universal, and not dependent on which language I'm currently in.
4. Plenty of GUIs have smooth scrolling or transitional animations. Some are intrusive, some are appealing, but in general, once people are doing a task repetitively they are impatient and want it to happen quickly and crisply. With the exception of tracking moving objects, our eyes jump around and jerk quickly, so we're completely suited to it. Plenty of people feel very comfortable with the speed of a jerky page up/page down and find scrollbars tedious.
Tracking moving objects, as you said, is what our brain is well suited at. The jerking around completely destroys this ability.
I believe most smooth-scrolls and other smooth animations until today were simply done incorrectly and too slowly.
A correct implementation would start moving at a high speed, and slow down near the end, so that for about 0.3 of the 0.5 seconds of the scroll you can already read the text although its moving. The brain is very good at deciphering movement like this, and kpdf's search is a great example of this feature.
What are you using? IIRC this was considered a significant innovation in window managers when I was finishing college in the 90s; but certainly hasn't been a problem for at least a decade.
I use Windows at the office and KDE at home.
Indeed KDE does not overlap windows when it doesn't have to, and this is a great improvement, but it still has problems:
The second point would require a large architectural change to fix, but I believe it is worth it. I believe the GUI should be aware of the entire widget hierarchy, and not just the top-level windows. Then it should be possible to use unused space not just at the window-level.
If you use Qt, it is trivial to translate shortcuts. They are like any other string. Wrap them in tr(), use lupdate utility to extract all those strings, then send the result off to your translators.
This is not a solution, it is a workaround. It has to be done correctly in for every key in every language, and takes enough work that it isn't really done.
The real solution is that key presses generate events containing the untranslated key code pressed, not the unicode character of the current language, and that is used for shortcut activation.
But 4? I prefer jumpiness. When I want something to happen, I want the computer to do it NOW, not do some silly animation before it does it.
The animations are not meant to be "cute" or slow things down. In fact they can be very fast, as demonstrated by kpdf's search feature.
The animations are meant to make use of the human brain's great capacity to discern visual movement when it is not jumpy.
This capacity is completely wasted in today's UI's because they jump too fast for the brain to track what happened, and you get disoriented.
The most disorienting example, I believe, is when you search for text in a document, and it scrolls horizontally and vertically as part of that search. You have absolutely no idea where you are after that happens.
This is even far worse when the search is incremental, and the screen jumps completely with every letter or backspace you press.
What's gray space? ( a) You make each of the windows small enough to tile them. That makes editing harder as you see less of the image.
b) You let the windows overlap as you can only edit one image at a time.
I don't know about you but b) sounds a lot more attractive to me...
You should be able to tell the computer what you want to see. If its more important for you to see the first image in full than to see the second image at all, then just tell the computer "this part is important", "this is not" (with about 2 gestures), rather than clicking and dragging about 5 times to tell the computer the same information more redundantly.
What? I have no idea what you're talking about, honestly. And yes, I do use both localized and non-localized software. Very few programs (usually older games) assume that 'z' always is next to 'y'.
Localized software often uses Ctrl-[random key here] for save, because that random key, in that particular localized language, happens to be the first letter of the word "save" in that particular language.
I want uniform, non-language-dependent shortcut keys. I want ctrl-s to work in all programs and no matter what language I'm in now.
Qué? I know, list boxes and comboboxes are similar, but they're distinctive enough to each have merit. I don't know what else you could be talking about.
I have replied to this point in various other posts.
You make your GUI smoothscroll everywhere, but leave mine in peace. When I use PageDn I want to get somewhere quickly. Smoothscrolling yould be decidedly counterproductive. In most other cases the same thing applies.
Again, smooth scrolling can be fast. See kpdf's search as an example.
I wonder if you are a Buddhist or a Christian.
1. The computer has no way of knowing, other than via user input, which information is important, and needs to be made viewable. I actually prefer to manually set the size and placement of my windows exactly the way I want them, because I know better than the computer does what I'm trying to accomplish.
That's true. You know better than the computer what you want to accomplish, or in this case "see". You know why? Because there's currently no way to tell the computer what you want to see. Telling the computer which information you want to see takes a lot less bandwidth (and thus a lot less mouse clicks) than telling the computer how to arrange the windows so you see them all.
If you actually told the computer which information you wanted to see, by clicking it in a special way (for example, allocate the mid-button, or right-double-click or something), then it could know exactly what you're trying to accomplish and arrange the windows so that they show you valuable data, and not gray pixels.
2. You're complaining about an edge case. The vast majority of users will only ever use a computing system in their own native language. It doesn't matter to me that the Spanish term for "Save" doesn't start with 's'; in English, Ctrl+S maps nicely to "Save".
I'm complaining about a very common case in my country. Here in Israel we intermix Hebrew and English all the time. I suspect this is true in almost all internationalized setups, because:
Not only this, but some programs have Hebrew interfaces available, while some have English ones. So "Save" is sometimes "ctrl-s", and sometimes "ctrl-(Hebrew-shin)", which is ctrl-a.
When I press a shortcut key, it either:
A "shortcut key" is always remembered, because you have to know its function and which letter was chosen (often not the first letter is chosen). So it doesn't really matter if save is Ctrl-s, or "f2" (as it was in Borland), as long as its a consistent, universal key.
If I need to check which language I'm in, switch languages, and then switch back to press a shortcut key, it might as well be named a longcut key!
3. I am interested to know which UI widgets you feel are superfluous. Running through the common ones (text boxes, menus, radio buttons, sliders, et al) in my head, I find each one to have a reasonable logical and/or graphical justification for existing. So what confuses you?
Radiobuttons are redundant to icon-sets you choose from, and have no visual cue of where you can press. Sometimes pressing the text works, sometimes it doesn't.
Tabs are redundant to "configuration listboxes" where you switch between listbox items and the whole window is replaced.
Drop-down menus are redundant to simple windows containing the options.
Combo-boxes are very annoying, in that they drop-down a tiny menu where often there are many options and the screen is, as usual, free. I need to scroll through that tiny space, and any mistake closes the menu and loses my scroll point.
4. I want a UI to react to my commands as quickly as possible. If I hit "page down", I want to see the next page now; I don't want to wait 2 seconds as the content smoothly scrolls to the new location. And if UIs were designed so that they did this, I suspect you'd be searching for the option to turn it back off as well.
The smooth scrolling, and other smooth movements can be very fast. See for example how kpdf (KDE's pdf reader) smooth scrolls when it finds text. It is MUCH more
I agree 100%. Jumpiness makes sense. Computer, and the programs and data that inhabit them, are not physical objects and do not behave like physical objects. UI gurus have been declaring for years that normal human beings cannot accept this and will never understand anything that was not familiar to humans on the savannahs of Africa 100,000 years ago.
Its not about "making sense", or behaving like physical objects at all.
Pointing out that a UI behavior has no counterpart in the "real" world says nothing about whether it will be difficult for people to understand and exploit the behavior. That argument has been discredited by years of experience.
Again, my argument has nothing to do with how things are in the real world.
The first bogeyman of this type was the word processor convention that text typed into a document was not permanent until the user asked for the file to be saved. This, it was said, would limit the use of word processing to a small group of slightly autistic subhumans who were willing to sacrifice their humanity and live by the machine's laws. (Or so it sounded to me.)
I never heard of this, and indeed I find the fact I have to click "save" quite an absurd waste of time. The default should be to keep data, not lose it. Irreversible acts, especially ones of loss, should be postponed as much as possible. In that regard, I also believe "deletion" should be replaced with "deprioritize the space" so that it is actually deleted only when that space is required again. Allowing undeletion for as long as possible without mucking around in a recycle bin.
This bizarre principle, discredited in practice, is still upheld by ideologues who believe that the tendency to create rational systems and mold the world to resemble them is somehow inhuman -- as if the engineers, scientists, car mechanics, accountants, and programmers of the world were not human beings expressing a deeply human trait but monsters weaving a toxic and alien thread into human society.
Its not about this either.
Who created the machines? In whose image were they made? A person who has no technical skill, who cannot program a VCR or learn the common GUI conventions, should not be considered more human for it, any more than a person should be considered more human for being unable to sing, dance, or make a child laugh.
I have no problem with computers offerring "non-intuitive" interfaces if they are more efficient. I have no will to make computers "more human" or "more akin to physical objects".
I want computers to have efficient interfaces.
Humans can learn almost anything, but some features of the human mind are innate and hard-wired into its functionality. Take visual processing for example - humans have an immense capacity for visual processing. But all non-blind humans have a much easier time discerning movement from smooth sliding across an area, than by an immediate jump.
The human mind actually has a built-in, hard-wired function in the brain of identifying graphical movement - and it doesn't work when things jump around, only when they smoothly slide around.
This can easily and probably was scientifically tested.
If you are interested, I can write a small program to prove this to you.