Last Monday 25 July 2005 19:34, Lee Revell was like: > On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 10:46 +0200, Mario Lang wrote: > > That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on something > > is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch > > a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting > > buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this > > "it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything > > about it" attitude is childish. Yes it's childish. However this is what the vast majority of 'normal' users do. My son (who is himself, a child) does this with most new games for about 10 minutes and then turns round and says "Dad, how does this work?". To which I answer calmly and patiently that I don't have a sweet Danny La Rue. Does he ever read the manual? does he even go to the setup tab to find out how the keybindings are set? Of course not. > I disagree violently with this line of reasoning. Software should > ALWAYS work the way the user expects it to unless there is a DAMN GOOD > REASON, for example if you are offering a much more powerful interface > than the user is used to. Yeah, the spacebar should ALWAYS fire the big gun. > For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use "Ctrl-F" to 'Find in page'. > Except Evolution, which forces you to use "Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in > page', because they have already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'. > > This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing it the normal > way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability purposes. Do you find that the developers respond well to being told this?-] Most things that aren't understandable to a child are usually nonsense. It follows that we must only send them to school for indoctrination purposes. cheers, tim hall http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
