ot-no free lunch and UI issues

[Sy Ali]

On 12/28/05, Paul Sutton <zen14920-1HOZaDBbGgxaa/9Udqfwiw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> some examples of UI problems
<snip>

I totally agree.  I think that it's becoming easier for me to see the
calibre of work which has gone into the UI design of a lot of the
popular software out there.

Linux applications have gotten spectacularly more easy to use.  I did
everything via the commandline when I started, and now I'm learning to
throw it all away and do things graphically.  I'm even stopping to
learn the "normal user" way of doing things so I can bury the arcane
knowledge.

I'm very hopeful in things improving.  I'm even starting to bite my
tongue about some of the problems that still bug me, because many of
my past annoyances have been solved.


> Get the base system working, theh give average person out there, the
> tools they need.

I agree.  Put things in their logical places.. make things findable
and obvious.  For example, I like the idea that a program can explain
itself with good design choices so that documentation becomes less and
less important in the user's experience.

I'm very pleased with the "user friendly" distributions which have
been coming out.  I think there are a bunch of dangers with many of
them because they are treading too hard on issues of system security
but things seem hopeful to me.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml