From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII X-Google-Thread: 103376,3cd3b8571c28b75f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-08-26 02:27:48 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news-FFM2.ecrc.net!uio.no!ntnu.no!not-for-mail From: Preben Randhol Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 09:27:47 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Norwegian university of science and technology Message-ID: References: <3F44BC65.4020203@noplace.com> <3F460D73.7090801@noplace.com> <20030822153839.5ec5c918.david@realityrift.com> <20030822184004.7e8c53bf.david@realityrift.com> <3F4769A7.6020503@noplace.com> <4Jy2b.939$zL2.310@nwrdny01.gnilink.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: tyfon.itea.ntnu.no 1061890067 17872 129.241.83.78 (26 Aug 2003 09:27:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@itea.ntnu.no NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 09:27:47 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.4 (Linux) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:41859 Date: 2003-08-26T09:27:47+00:00 List-Id: Stephane Richard wrote: > 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. Well. Consider this. You have a nice shiny GUI and you have 200 new student that should be registered in a database. You have gotten a file of names and ids etc... So what do you do? Yes you print the file and sit and click-i-click for a couple of days to get them all in. Wereas if you had a non GUI interface you could easily script it to take 5 min. What I'm saying is that a GUI is everything and it is certainly not the best interface always. As to the printing; you need both! You need both a shortcut and a icon/menu. Because using the keyboard is much faster than reaching for the mouse all the time. I mean consider making a program for editing text without Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V or equivalent shortcuts and you get my meaning. > 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. A really good GUI interface (I have seen some of these lately) should have these choices: I'm a computer illiterate I'm a normal user I'm an expert user. If you choose the first you get simple menus and a limit set of options that are most useful. As you choose a higher level more options are presented. -- �I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet. So who am I to judge.� - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radioplay)