On Monday 07 October 2002 01:51, John Yanosko wrote: > A gui designed by and for newbies is not the same thing as one that is > efficient for the majority of users. I'm reminded of the story of the > college president who had a quad planted with grass, and the following > year had sidewalks built where paths had been worn. But what if he had > put the sidewalks only where confused freshmen had trodden on the first > day of class?
Here is some sound advice from IBM. It used to be at http://www.ibm.com/hci/ (and can still be found there), but the correct current location is the less memorable http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/publish/558 There is also the companion http://www.ibm.com/ucd/ To my mind, there are lessons that can still be learned from OS/2. OS//2 Warp version 3 had a Launchpad, similar to Wharf for those who remember it. It's also a bit like the Gnome panel without the menus. Like GP, it has single buttons which you can click to launch applications, and there is a small default set on it. Like GP, it also has drawers. Unlike GP's drawers, if you click on the drawer's button you launch an application. To launch applications within a drawer, you first open the drawer by clicking its handle. You can change much of its behaviour, including whether drawers remain open, by editing its settings/preferences. What I think _should_ be done to simplify the Gnome and KDE interfaces is to restructure the menus so that a) All applications are in Applications or submenus of Applications. This includes Internet applications, Office applications and so on. b) System configuration tools should be in a System Tools menu, and by default only visible to root. c) The Launcher (which in Gnome might still be GP) would have a few default applications, "Red Hat Recommendations" if you like. Those initial selectionsshould prefer the DTE's own applications, so on KDE you have kmail, an Internet dialler, maybe koffice and maybe OOo if installed. And the documentation browser, Konq etc. The Gnome version would have XE, an Internet dialler, OOo, the documentaion browser, Moz etc. I'd like to see drawers that open koffice Word (dialler, OOo Writer); click on its handle and you have nic big buttons to click on and open other Office, Internet, OOo applications. Deleting applications by the user should be as easy as dragging them to the trash bin. To add, drag an item from the 'start" menu, from a desktop launcher or a web page. On OS/2, in Netscape (when last I used it) you could drag the page from Netscape to the desktop (or Launchpad) and it would create an URL object to open the browser at that document. For those not very capable with the mouse, the buttons represent a big target that doesn't vanish if your aim is poor. For everyone, you can have instant access to your preferred applications with one, maybe two mouse-clicks and no mouse-drags. Before responding to this, please take the time to browse IBM's "Ease of Use" website. IBM has put quite some effort into UI design, and we can all learn from its experience and study.
