About Interfaces

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Published Wednesday, June 18, 2003 7:48 AM by RoyOsherove
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Tuesday, June 17, 2003 9:10 PM by Frans Bouma

# re: About Interfaces

In a slashdot thread a year or so ago a lot of these things were discussed, particularly about software interfaces. Someone in that thread suddenly said: "Why do I have to click 'save' in a wordprocessor? Isn't it obvious I'm typing the text in to store it?" Excellent thinking, which totally makes todays solutions worthless crap. That remark was about the core of what is truly useful: do not worry about the obvious.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 9:20 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Interfaces

Huh. Nice thought :)
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 11:39 PM by Dave

# re: About Interfaces

Actually your Excel quirk isn't entirely correct. If you CTRL-C then RETURN (copy and paste?) you only get one time. But if you CTRL-C then CTRL-V (copy and insert?) you can do it as many times as you wish. I'm not sure where I picked this up from, but it's been a major time saver for me.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 12:05 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Interfaces

Dave: What I'm talking about is that you *can * multiple paste as long as the cell you CTRL+C'ed is highlighted with that blinking rectangle thingie. What if you COpy a cell, then go to another cell and press DELETE on that cell? can you still paste that cell you copied?
nope. gone forever....
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:07 AM by Kenneth LeFebvre

# re: About Interfaces

Another thing that really bothers me, and Microsoft does this too much, too-- when you get a dialog box that asks you "Do you want to do this or that?" and then you get YES/NO or OK/CANCEL buttons... The buttons should be the actual answer to the question!
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:46 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Interfaces

Kenneth - Yeah I know what you mean. You *know* you're doing something wring when you have to explain which button does what...
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:48 AM by TrackBack

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heLP .Net Blog
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:48 AM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:56 AM by Darrell

# re: About Interfaces

The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465067107/qid=1055948001/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-3407400-8481610?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:15 AM by David

# re: About Interfaces

As for the door, no handle is ok if the closer works at an acceptable speed, otherwise how do you close it behind you if you're going out?
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:59 AM by Dave

# re: About Interfaces

Okay, no problem. I was in agreement and just wan't sure by how you wrote it whether you realized this behavior in Excel existed.

While I am in agreement, I'm curious how you feel MS stacks up relative to other widely-used 'integrated' software. I've often thought their fairly consistant used of menu shortcuts/text and toolbar icons/placements were a reason nobody has really jumped on the Linux desktop much. I'm certainly not going to deal with the retraining issues and frustrated power users that have to learn different keystrokes for the same function in various 'integrated' packages.

I too am constantly amazed at how so-called visual programmers have no clue how to program a usable interface.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 7:08 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Interfaces

Darrell: Yeah. Great Book. I think it's even on my "purchased and recommended" book list :)

Funny Amazon story about that book:

I was in amazon preparing to order the book, when suddenly I see that amazon was having a "sale" .You know, they have this little title saying "Buy this book along with *that* book and get a discount.
well that title was saying "Get 'the design of everyday things' along with 'The Psychology of everyday things" and get a discount'.
well, natuarally, I went ahead and bought both of these books, only to later realize that they are both the same book with different titles!.
I was so convinced that the two books compliment each other, that I didn;t even bother checking it out first. Impulse buys suck!

Heh. Norman even says in the opening of his 'new' book that he wanted to change the title to 'the design of...' because 'the psychology of...' was scaring people away, except for psychologists , that is...

I was totally fooled, but that's a sign amazon has a good marketing design... :)