Re: UI design [was Owen Taylor's paper]

On Fri, 2002-09-20 at 01:24, John wrote:
> On Friday 20 September 2002 12:49, Jef Spaleta wrote:
> > Hey I'm not suggesting you are above or below average intelligence...but
> 
> Above. well enough above to raise eyebrows.
there you go...yer in the too damn smart category. No wonder you have
problems with car wind shield wiper controls...you think too differently
than the average person.

> How about you, do you still hunt and peck at the keyboard, or have you learned 
> where all the keys are? I guess you know most of them by now.
> 
> Would switching between qwerty and Dvorak slow you down? I guess it would.


I think i've covered this line of argument in several responsess
now...keyboards are different than graphical layout...the expectation in
keyboard usage is that you are not going to be looking at the keyboard
while using it so visual clues are not expected to be used..so relative
layout position is what carries the information about the keys the
labels are there as a crutch to help you learn the layout.  Take your
pick do you want to argue about graphics layout or do you want to argue
about keyboards and other devices that you are not giving your visual
attention to while in use.  Graphical systems are not designed around
relative position as the information carrier and were never expected to
be.  Do any of the self consistant toolkits let you turn off text, icon,
and tooltip labels leaving you only positional information? Positional
location was never meant to encode information in a graphical
system...its the labels and icons that relay information..

from the gnome hig:
To a user with normal vision, textual output provides the majority of
the information and feedback in most applications. To a
visually-impaired user who may not be able to see or understand any
additional graphical output, clear textual output is critical. You must
therefore choose and position text carefully on the screen, and leave
the choice of fonts and sizes to the user, to ensure that all users are
able to use your application effectively.


-jef