On 10 Aug 2006, at 23:36, John Martinez wrote:
On Aug 10, 2006, at 5:02 AM, Calum Benson wrote:
However, 'web based' and 'GUI' in the same sentence make most
usability people cry :)
Agreed. I wish Sun and others would take more usability clues from
Apple and the like. Copying Windows (JDS) is not my idea of
"usability."
FWIW, this is partly down to "minimize retraining" being
overwhelmingly the largest customer requirement our marketing folks
got when they originally asked potential JDS customers what they
would need from a Solaris or Linux desktop to encourage them to
switch from Windows.
Now, you could certainly argue that Minimize Retraining != Copy
Windows, necessarily, especially as many of the end users we were
targeting at the time just tended to run the same application on a
locked-down desktop all day every day. And for the rest, you could
also argue that a more-usable-but-different desktop would satisfy
that criterion too, as there would be some retraining, but it would
be certainly be 'minimal' due to the new desktop's inherent
consistency and learnability, and the investment would soon be
outweighed by the productivity benefits.
But there you go... some of the more unnecessary Windows-alike
behaviour has already been removed from JDS for nevada, and I'm sure
more will go if we remain more techie/developer-focused for a while.
Ultimately we're also somewhat limited by the direction GNOME itself
takes, of course; we do have some influence there, but certainly not
enough to radically change anything overnight.
Cheeri,
Calum.
--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Java Desktop System Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771
Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems
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