Re: My usability experience - Asa Dotzler should be fired

On Aug 16, 10:39 pm, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think you mis-characterize an unfairly malign design philosophy when
> you say it's "designing for the dumbest imaginable user".  Mozilla has
> never done that and never will. We design for the widest possible
> audience with the resources we have. That audience isn't dumb and I
> suspect that the overwhelming majority of them would object to you
> characterizing them as such.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to correct you here. I don't expect
you'll want to hear it. I honestly expect it's one of those things you
reaffirm for yourself to keep yourself sane and moving forward. It's
the lie that keeps the UX team (which I personally see as the source
of all that is "bad" in Firefox) from being torn apart by the "power
users" that made Mozilla a thing.

They /are/ dumb. They are not good at computer. They will readily tell
you so. All of them. My brother, who logs into Facebook by putting
"Facebook login" in the search bar, as do millions; my mother, who is
afraid to do anything if data disappears from view, for fear of losing
it, who barely understands tabs, and wont grasp the concept windows
before she dies; my sister, who knows what a URL is and can recognize
one when she sees it, but does not know how to read the content of the
URL; and, hell, even my father, who once made a disk driver for the
Commodore 64, will all readily admit that modern software is far
beyond their comprehension.

These are the half-billion new users. Looking at it in this light, I
even now /support/ the rapid release nonsense that produced Firefox 4
and up. (That I refuse to install for my mother, lest I ever have to
suffer using it, instead opting to let her sit on 3.6. Updating for
her would almost be cruel.) I can't ever bring myself to do anything
to Chrome but discourage the hell out of it, so in absence of a non-IE
browser for the dumb masses, I guess Firefox is my recommendation. I
don't even use Firefox as my main. My main is SeaMonkey. This may well
be the enterprise solution for Firefox. 3.6 exists in limbo for the
precise reason that there's no way rapid release is going to work for
anything but someone who install Firefox themself for their personal
use only. There is no enterprise solution for Firefox anymore, and,
since Firefox is "for the widest possible audience," there really
doesn't need to be. Enterprise features may often be at odds with
pandering to the largest audience here. Pandering to the largest
audience is almost definitely at odds with designing things for "power
users." "Firefox should have an enterprise option," could easily prove
counterproductive for the developers and users alike.

Sure, I'm biased here, because I'd like to get more people using
SeaMonkey, which inevitably results in more developers, both of the
browser and for add-ons. My bias comes from my decision to use
SeaMonkey. My decision to use SeaMonkey comes from my bias against
dumbed down interfaces designed for the masses. My aversion to dumbed
down interfaces comes from my biased understanding of the technologies
involved. (Positive bias on that last one.)

If you're a "power user" who can sympathize with my biases, then from
a fellow "power user," I personally recommend SeaMonkey.

Firefox has "made it." Now let's go "make" SeaMonkey.