Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

["Stephane Richard" <stephane.richard@verizon.net>]

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"Chad R. Meiners" <crmeiners@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bidssm$12sr$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu...
>
> "Preben Randhol" <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message
> news:slrnbkji2n.2kg.randhol+abuse@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no...
> > The notion that something that looks nice and shiny on the cover is a
> > better product is a foolish thought.
>
> I think Marin was saying that products should be both shiney and useful
;-)
> I think that we all can agree that a useful program becomes better with a
> nicer interface; therefore, GNU business software could benifit nicely
from
> a group of people that would put time and effort into making the software
> easy to use.
>
> -CRM
>
>
And to that, I have to agree.   A good user interface (in today's business
world) is just as important than good functionality.  Let's face it,
business users today just dont want to have to do Shift-Ctrl-Alt-F4 to get
something to print.  they wanna click the file menu, then print. Or they
want to push that little button with the Printer drawn on it.  It's been my
professional experiences.  Some hard core users like to have that complicate
key combo.

To me it's a question of balancing the two.  You can't give 600 features on
a screen because the screen gets cluttered beyond usability.  If you take
these 600 and split them into Tabs (which looks quite nice) then other users
will complain there's just too many steps to getting at the end.  so do you
cut 600 features down to 400?  Other users will complain that it lacks
features then. :-)...It's hard to balance the functional / usability ratio
but I think it can still be done....First of my example is exagerated, 600
features is a lot for a screen of any design. At that point you can usually
put part of that into somekind of preferences that can be setup during the
installation for example so they still have it, but dont havfe to bother
with it unless then want to change it permanently.

I give whatever I develop a good try, usually if I think a certain part
takes too many steps, or is just to harsh to read, too cluttered, chances
are the users will think so too.





-- 
St�phane Richard
Senior Software and Technology Supervisor
http://www.totalweb-inc.com
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