Re: January meeting

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2000 will [at] south-of-heaven.demon.co.uk wrote:

> Right you are. It's a trade off. You cannot (and that's cannot with a
> capital C, A N, etc.) have more power and configurability without adding
> more complexity.

Oh dear, I'm disagreeing with everyone today :(. But I disagree ;) What is
power? I define power as, 'the ability for the majority of users to be
productive', and if application a is more powerful than application b,
that signifies that the majority of users of application a are more
productive. Don't confuse power with quantity of features.

> And while UI design can make thinks more intuitive, a novice user will
> not be able to configure a firewall, for example. Default configurations
> and simplifications are OK, but one day you will need to get under the
> hood.

I don't agree with that either. Example: to configure a web server such as
Apache, you need to delve into three (one) configuration files. In
reality, all you need are two settings: directory, and port. I could write
a webserver that any Harry could install and use in two minutes flat, no
problems whatsoever. It's called inflecting the interface, and it's what
user interface design is all about.

> > configuring and printing from a text based program under linux is my
> > idea of hell.....
> lpr <filename>
> How can that be simplified?

Using CUPS? ;)

> It should be easy to use. UNIX does have a problem with inconsistency
> among interfaces, both GUI and command line, for a variety of reasons.
> People are working on it. The annoying thing is people who claim Linux
> has a bad UI because it isn't the same as Windows. They don't think
> what's the best way? they just immediately claim it's crap because it
> isn't <insert favourite Windows program here>. I mean, have you used 3D
> Studio MAX under Windows? Now that's a UI to behold.

Heh, I hope you don't hold me in that first category ;) BTW, for a really
ugly interface, try the Blender. It's so unfriendly it makes me laugh.
(Sorry Photoshop, I *have* just though of a worse interface!)

Regards,

Al.

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