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Re: [Ayatana] Unity2D -- wow! (And hidden window buttons)
Den 27. aug. 2011 18:31, skrev Thorsten Wilms:
On 08/27/2011 03:08 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
If anything, people should not be given the impression that they can
learn how to use a computer by exploration.
Aspects that may support the impression that a UI can be learned by
exploration:
- Visibility of options
- Clearly defined active areas (like buttons that do look like buttons)
- Direct manipulation
- Immediate feedback
- Forgiveness (especially Undo)
- Hints (info-bar messages, tooltips)
Does it seem like a good idea to do away with all that?
Nobody has ever proposed that we "do away with all that". But yes,
I do feel that a screen with thousands of options visible at all times
makes the system much more difficult to use. No matter how big your
screen is, there will never be room for all possible options to be shown
at all times. I can see no reason why anyone would need a constant
reminder for thousands of hours how they can close a window.
Perhaps it will take 30 seconds to learn how to expose menus and
window controls. Are you seriously telling me that anyone you know
would require more time than that?
Is it your point that by exploring Ubuntu, people should discover that
since it is similar to Windows, you can just run Windows applications?
Because that is a very obvious assumption to make, wouldn't you
say? So, by telling people to not learn about Ubuntu, but to just
use it like've always used Windows, you're making everything much
more difficult for them. If they instead took the fifteen minutes to
read, then they would not make those kinds of wrong assumptions
and they would not say Ubuntu is bad software because spotify.exe
didn't run.
From my observations of classmates, fellow students and various other
users, I see roughly 2 categories of users (putting all nuances aside
for the moment):
- Those who do learn a lot by themselves by active exploration, by
trying things out to see what happens.
- Those who don't and tend to struggle even with what is being taught
to them step by step. They end up barely capable of following a few
receipts, but if there is any deviation, they are lost.
Of course there are things where you just have to read documentation,
because of inherent complexity and risks. I don't think window
management should fall into that category.
"To close a window, move the mouse to the upper-left corner to show
the buttons and click the red one". That's a heavy study, huh?
It should be easy to learn, but
these types of changes does not in any way make a computer more
difficult
to use.
Elsewhere you stated the need to see how this works out in practice,
but here you make statement you can't back up. It is a fact that
closing a window via the close button becomes more difficult, if the
button is hidden at first. The only way how this would not make "using
the computer" more difficult, would be if
That is not a fact. Indeed, it is wrong. You move the mouse the exact
same way. You click the button the exact same way. Identical. You just
need to know that they are there, which requires a few seconds of
explanation. To make those seconds into such a big deal, tells me that
some people are terrified of any kind of change. It isn't rational. It isn't
real. And yes, I have tested this in real life, on inexperienced users.
None of them had any kind of reaction to it at all. People do not panic
when the buttons are moved from right to left, and they certainly do
not panic by the fact that they aren't clickable until you move the
mouse to the buttons.
Using the mouse, however, is really difficult to them. But that cannot
be fixed by Ubuntu.
Jo-Erlend Schinstad