IMHO a menu becomes "busy"( unfriendly ) if it has more then 10 choices on it and more then 1 submenu for each menu choice.
Those fold up menus M$ does are not a solution either....so PLEASE do not copy that idea.
That just irritates users.
Limit the menu options to the most popular things to change and put everything else in tabbed dialogs and/or config files for the power users to futz with.
The last few months have seen some improvements in this area.
However there is still a lot of improvemnt needed and this issue is often poo-pooed by developers.
Project leads may love the idea of multiplatform code, or some other scheme, but the user does not care........especially if the app takes over 5 seconds to load. Times this by two if there are faster loading alternatives available.
Think of a car salesman trying to sell a car that took 10 min worth of choking to start by emphasizing the "really cool technology" in the engine.
There have been some very inspiring examples in the OSS community of developers starting to grok user friendly.
Some projects still do not get it. There is an unconscious assumption that merely wrapping commands in a menu/GUI is making an app user friendly.
The biggest culprits seem to be projects that port command line tools to a GUI like emacs, x-cdburn, and oracle's sql interface ( not oss ).
One of the ways a GUI makes an app user friendly is if the GUI takes away some of the need for knowing how to do something in the app.
X-CDBURN ( name? ) is a good example of this. It is GUI, but the user still needs to know how to use the command line tool commands in order to burn a CD.
What is the point in wrapping the command-line tools in a GUI then? Those sequence of commands could just as easily be typed into a shell without the overhead of the GUI.
In contrast there is K3b where a user can burn a CD without having to read a HowTo to learn the theory/practice of making CDs.
Not to pick on X-CDROAST, other apps do this as well.
If you are not going to design a GUI that eliminates some of needing to know how to do a task it is not worth porting an app to a GUI.
If I have to know a string of commands and how to use them Xterm tastes great and is less filling.
The site is sponsored by a group called Public Citzen, a 30 year old organization established with Ralph Nader that among other tracks the funding of all canidates, regardless of party:
Microsoft is on the list of contributors to the Bush reelection campaign.
The beauty of this is that by putting weapons in space other countries will build things to shoot them down necessitating the need for a space defense.
The defense contractors, aerospace engineers, and republicans will have all of the justification they need to spend what they haven't spent of our money ( or children's money........borrowing/debt ) on a new arms race no one needs.
true, definitely true. but the weary middle-aged male in me isn't looking forward to eating catfood out of a can with my fingers in my retirement, what with all the output of our economy whizzing around in space over our heads.
M$ Windows runs better and is more feature rich on lower level machines ( PIIs, PIs )
Even if you strip down to just a window manager on such a machine you still get an intolerable resource drain.
I had to read this several times because I couldn't believe I was seeing it right. Current versions of the various Linux distros will run much better on older hardware than will current versions of MS Windows. I could not get acceptable performance out of the PIII/450 I'm sitting at now when I installed Win2k on it (briefly) in 2001;
You read right. My mistake, I meant to write earlier version of M$ windows.......not XP/2000
I had jobs with winNT ( and even 98 ) on PIIs and PIs.
It was slow, but I got more GUI features and speed with those versions of windows then I have experimenting with X on similar hardware.
Linux can revitalize an old piece of hardware, with shell programs, but there are big limits to the GUI programs it can run on older hardware, limits that MS windows of the time did not have.
b)Most of the "I'm going to replace Xwindows" projects are doing so because its supposedly "slow" and "bloated", and we see a large number of posts in every Xwindows-related story on slashdot claiming the same thing. Most of them are wrong.
I mean no offense to you or the good people at the X* projects, but this is simply not true.
M$ Windows runs better and is more feature rich on lower level machines ( PIIs, PIs )
Even if you strip down to just a window manager on such a machine you still get an intolerable resource drain.
I definately relate to the objections. I don't even drink. Why should I pay extra for a new car for this feature? Why should I forced to take a test everytime I want to drive?
DUI related problems will be reduced when strict laws are made AND enforced.
Europeans drink more then we do, they also have higher speed limits. Guess what? They also have fewer drunk driving accidents. They have strict DUI laws that they enforce.
ESR may have a bit of a primiadonna attitude, but compared to RMS he is humble as they get.
I only met RMS once, but from that experience I would not call him a primadonna.
He comes across as fairly rational...just uncompromising in his beliefs and agenda. Like it or not, that is what it takes for a new movement. Hey, he has beliefs to be uncompromising about.
He could use a little work on the methods he is using to fight for those beliefs, but none of us is perfect.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone unacquainted with an app needs a menu choice explained to them then that menu choice needs to be reworded, redesigned, or removed.
IMHO
Steve
This is not just happening in the OSS community.
IMHO a menu becomes "busy"( unfriendly ) if it has more then 10 choices on it and more then 1 submenu for each menu choice.
Those fold up menus M$ does are not a solution either....so PLEASE do not copy that idea.
That just irritates users.
Limit the menu options to the most popular things to change and put everything else in tabbed dialogs and/or config files for the power users to futz with.
Steve
The last few months have seen some improvements in this area.
However there is still a lot of improvemnt needed and this issue is often poo-pooed by developers.
Project leads may love the idea of multiplatform code, or some other scheme, but the user does not care........especially if the app takes over 5 seconds to load. Times this by two if there are faster loading alternatives available.
Think of a car salesman trying to sell a car that took 10 min worth of choking to start by emphasizing the "really cool technology" in the engine.
Steve
Some projects still do not get it. There is an unconscious assumption that merely wrapping commands in a menu/GUI is making an app user friendly.
The biggest culprits seem to be projects that port command line tools to a GUI like emacs, x-cdburn, and oracle's sql interface ( not oss ).
One of the ways a GUI makes an app user friendly is if the GUI takes away some of the need for knowing how to do something in the app.
X-CDBURN ( name? ) is a good example of this. It is GUI, but the user still needs to know how to use the command line tool commands in order to burn a CD.
What is the point in wrapping the command-line tools in a GUI then? Those sequence of commands could just as easily be typed into a shell without the overhead of the GUI.
In contrast there is K3b where a user can burn a CD without having to read a HowTo to learn the theory/practice of making CDs.
Not to pick on X-CDROAST, other apps do this as well.
If you are not going to design a GUI that eliminates some of needing to know how to do a task it is not worth porting an app to a GUI.
If I have to know a string of commands and how to use them Xterm tastes great and is less filling.
Steve
It is not user friendly, or logical to set the defaults of a highly configurable app to favor the power user over the newbie.
- the newbie has to be won over, not the power user
- the power user is more capable at changing prefs
Just a thought
Steve
My guess is developers do this to differentiate their product from someone else's.
As an end user, it just irritates me. I have to take time out to learn how to do something I already know how to do in another application.
There is no benefit in this for me as an end user.
I don't care if X's app looks like Y's app.
As an end user I would actually consider this a plus.....not having to learn a new UI to do the same thing.
Steve
Yet, now I am reading ranting from the same community about making Java open sourced.
Steve
JAVA was/is
If it gets open sourced someone will co-op it, embrace-extend it, borg it, whatever and its multiplatform, WORA nature will be forever gone.
I use linux and I have never had a problem with downloading and installing Java.
This is about some overgrown children in the OS community crying to get their own way.
Steve
SUN's stewardship has prevented Java from being co-opted and the multiplatform nature from being destroyed.
If JAVA is open sourced it will eventually be bastardized into incompatiable versions.
C was supposed to be portable and multiplatform when it started off as well.
Eric Raymond is just plain wrong and IBM is using this to pressure its rival SUN into doing something stupid.
Steve
Steve
The site is sponsored by a group called Public Citzen, a 30 year old organization established with Ralph Nader that among other tracks the funding of all canidates, regardless of party:
Microsoft is on the list of contributors to the Bush reelection campaign.
Steve
Steve
There are still some things they have not done that they could.
If google does what it is famous for...being innovative and simple..with spam filtering I will drop yahoo email like Dr. Atkins dropping a hot potato.
Steve
The defense contractors, aerospace engineers, and republicans will have all of the justification they need to spend what they haven't spent of our money ( or children's money........borrowing/debt ) on a new arms race no one needs.
Steve
Steve
They should let their user's decide via a contest what the name should be.
Um, don't forget to run the winning label through google first :)
Steve
I had jobs with winNT ( and even 98 ) on PIIs and PIs.
It was slow, but I got more GUI features and speed with those versions of windows then I have experimenting with X on similar hardware.
Linux can revitalize an old piece of hardware, with shell programs, but there are big limits to the GUI programs it can run on older hardware, limits that MS windows of the time did not have.
Steve
M$ Windows runs better and is more feature rich on lower level machines ( PIIs, PIs )
Even if you strip down to just a window manager on such a machine you still get an intolerable resource drain.
Steve
DUI related problems will be reduced when strict laws are made AND enforced.
Europeans drink more then we do, they also have higher speed limits. Guess what? They also have fewer drunk driving accidents. They have strict DUI laws that they enforce.
Steve
I have close calls a weekly basis on the account of people using those things.
Steve
I know this is a useless comment, but:
BRAVO!!!
It made my morning.
He comes across as fairly rational...just uncompromising in his beliefs and agenda. Like it or not, that is what it takes for a new movement. Hey, he has beliefs to be uncompromising about.
He could use a little work on the methods he is using to fight for those beliefs, but none of us is perfect.
Steve
BAD:
- of the popular java products SUN does not
make any.
- SUN's jdk/jvm runs the slowest of all the
commerical developers
- SUN interferes with other companies who do
try to make better things of/for Java
Good:
- has protected Java from being coopted,
embraced & extened, borged...whatever by
M$.
This is always a real danger. C started
as a cross platform languare too.
Steve
Steve