Eli Marmor wrote:
> The programs were also friendlier, because all the options in the
> (limited) UI/menus/etc were textual, in simple English, and not
> graphical icons that you must be a genious to guess what the programmer
> meant. If icons were really friendlier than text, it could be useful in
> other fields of life; For example, instead of speaking to each other,
> we could use pantomime. Fortunately, nobody is so cruel to force the
> people to communicate in pictures (except for UI "experts" who force
> the programmers to over-use graphics).
>
Menus, like Icons, are just means to shorten the learning curve.
Keyboard shortcuts rule ;-)
While there's nothing wrong with short LC, it is orthogonal to program's
productivity/usefulness. The problem is just another manifestation of
consumption culture---nobody cares about long-term usefulness.
Add more eye-candy, make it really easy to learn how to do one or two
basic tasks (the stuff buyers normally think of when testing new
software), and you get more market. By the time they get to their more
complex needs, they'll have to buy a new version (and if they're already
locked in, you don't care about their needs anyway).
Nowadays, this has become an Ideology, well preached, e.g., by some of
Joel Spolsky's much quoted articles
(which are mostly true and clever advice---if you define "good software"
as "software that makes lots of money", of course...)
> I have clear explanation for what has happened since then, but I don't
> want to enter flaming wars.
>
I doubt you'd get more flames here for such explanation than e.g. for
claiming to have one. But might be better to post somewhere else
anyways, e.g. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (or better yet, give a link to
a blog entry).
Posted using a full-of-icons-and-eyecandy-outlook-lookalike
thunderbird<M-left><M-d>icedove on a bloated-and-footprint-iconed Gnome
desktop. What can I say - "they" got me too :-)
AA
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