🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On 18 Oct 89 06:40:35 GMT, jonabbey@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Jonathan Abbey) said:


ja> I am quite eagerly looking forward to the new release, am most especially
ja> looking forward for the new interface, but I'm not sure I like the sound of
ja> this one button window depth mechanism.  Admittedly, as an Amiga owner of
ja> four years standing I'm an "old dog", but I really think I'll be less
ja> comfortable with a one button depth arranger.

Well, I'm an Amiga owner of only three years standing, so I can't
"pull rank", but I think the one-button depth arranger is a great idea.


ja> I hope Commodore does some user interaction
ja> testing like Apple did while they were designing the Mac's interface, to see
ja> which is the more efficient, and which people prefer.


I'm not sure Apple did enough testing.  Their interface is designed
around the assumption that you will be using a 9-inch screen (pulldown
menus, scrollbars on the righthand sides of windows instead of the
left, trashcan in the lower corner of the Finder display, scroll
arrows at opposite extremes of the scroll bar).  The Apple interface
becomes pretty difficult to use once you move to a Radius display, for
example.

The Apple file dialogs do not immediate indicate directory
structure, nor do they indicate the mechanism for moving around in the
directory hierarchy.  In user testing of applications software that I
performed for a class on user interface design, at least one of the
users (a Mac novice) was completely befuddled by the standard Mac file
dialog.

The modality of Mac dialogs is also a problem.  When a Mac dialog
appears on the screen, access to menus, other windows, and depth
arranging becomes impossible.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that the Mac interface is not the
usability dreamworld it is cracked up to be.

				--M
-- 
__
\/  Michael Portuesi	Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc.
			portuesi@SGI.COM