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

Justin Moore wrote:
>    This e-mail is probably against my better judgement, but oh well ... :)
It's fun no?

>    I agree that important dialogs should stand out and say "Your system
> will EXPLODE if you hit ENTER [ BZZT BZZT BZZT!!! ]", but why should
> three nearly-identical web browsers have three different arrangements of
> Menu Bars or placements of "Continue/Cancel" and "Yes/No"?

Because the writer wanted that way. It felt better to him that way.

> junkbuster proxy and try to set "give_him_hot_pr0n=1".  Fortunately the
> browsers I use all have consistent placement of "Accept/Reject" boxes.
> What if new browser WebFoo comes along using the {gtk2,qt3} toolkit, but
> reverses this?  Give me one reason why it's a Good Thing for them to use

Don't use it is always an option, not the best but an option.

Ask the author to change it? Ask him why he did it differently.
He my not have known the other all did the reverse. He could be left 
handed and want to make different mouse movements at his desk than
like to?

> boxes on and off, but weird UI placement throws me off _for no good
> reason_.

You are assuming "no good reason".
There may be one you just don't know.


>    Yeah, don't hurt yourself with the sarcasm there.  I *strongly*
> believe in the need for people to educate themselves.  But there are
> right ways and wrong ways to go about it.  Giving a user a nice app with
> a consistent dialog and plenty of help documentation is the right way.
> Making them paranoid and irritable at your product because you randomly
> switch around standard dialogs in a nonstandard way is the wrong way.

Notice you said app with consistent dialogs.
 From app to app they can vary.

> If they *do* want to gain marketshare from Joe Q. Public, they're going
> to have to get their ducks in a row over even nitpicky stuff like dialog
> box placement.

You mean button placement right? I hate dialogs that
popup in the center of the sceen instead of over the app
window or near the mouse pointer. Same for dialogs that
don't have decorations, making them hard to move. Or that
are modal when a mode-less dilalog would work, and allow
me to work. Especially the ones that require data entry,
I might need to open anothe documant to get that info!

>    Yes, don't give them an excuse to click-through, but do this through
> intelligent selection of when you present dialog boxes and giving the
> user control over what they want questions about.

That's tangent to the discussion of the placement and ordering
of the action buttons in a dialog.

>>No no...you should plan to give people more control over the amount and
>>quality of the information the application is trying to present to them.
> 
> 
>    That is part of "planning for it."  But what I was trying to get
> through with "plan for it" was to have applications be a) robust enough
> to recover from an incorrect decision or allow the user to correct it,
> and b) don't randomize messages because you will lose users and
> marketshare that way;

Not random messages. Random button ordering. So you have to
Think about an important decision. Incorrect defaults are also
bad. Like the "Save before closing" dialog. The default should
be "Don't Close". Neither "Save", nor "Don't Save" are correct.
And "Don't Close" is more appropriate that "Cancel". Cancelk
what, the save or the close?

I got bit by this once. The question was "Do you want to save
your changes? YES/NO". I used another app and the question was
"Are you sure you want to exit with unsaved changes? YES/NO"
I noticed the Question was different as my finger hit the "YES"
button. Here the fact that the dilog was so similar, I think
both has titles like "Unsaved file", caused a problem.

>    Grr.  No no no.  I'm not saying all dialogs should be there, I'm
> saying all dialogs should be consistent.  What is so difficult with the
> concept of a nice, well-documented, logical, consistent layout, that can

Who do you suggest defines this layout?
What if I want a button label that's not in the definition?

Once you have the layout defined, Do you a) not allow apps that
violate the spec in, or b) spend lots of man-years rewriting the
app to follow the spec?



>>GUI's were never designed with layout placement meant to encode
>>information...layout is stylistic...not informative.
> 
> 
>    *bzzt*, wrong.  Layout == context, context == informative.  Context
> allows users to extract information from their environment and
> prioritize information and decision.  If I know that my car's important
> warning lights are on the right (engine check, overheating), and the
> stupid stuff is on the right (ie, Saturn's "you should upshift" light),
> I am going to pay more attention when a light on my right-hand-side
> comes on than one on the left.  Context conveys information.

So, should Ford or GM not be allowed to put the important
lights on the left? What about moving the "stupid" stuff
to the center,and having important stuff on the right and left?

> We have laws against creating accidents and speeding, but it still
> happens, which is why cars are designed to be crash-resistant and
> protect the passengers.

They are more for protection from other drivers that don't
follow the rules. And for situations beyond your control,
like hitting a pothole, and it blowing-out a tire.

For applictaion, those uncontrollable situatiuons are
more like someone/think killing the app, instead of
exiting correctly. Or the UPS incase a storm knows out
the power.

> features and consistency.  People are more willing to put up with nice
> looking crap that works most of the time than they are with
> full-featured stuff that confuses them and leads to a greater chance of

If you want that, use Windoze. That why I no longer do.
Lots of pertty, consistian, *CRAP*. I'd rather have the full features 
stuff I have to pay attention to, in order to reduce risks.


>    Web development, true, OSS, false.  OSS gives you complete control.
> 100% So much so that recently some of the less reasonable advocates (but
> not developers) of Gnome2 and KDE got their panties in a twist about
> their work being changed.

I disagree with the changes made. That was discussed before.
To restate. The Red Hat version are nice. But I'd prefer a
simple choice to get the defaults. Yes, gconf will get me the
default icons, and UI look, but it requires several, undocumented
changes. And there is no easy way to seperate the GNOME, KDE and
neither applications in the menus.

	-Thomas