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[Thomas Lübking]

Am Monday 08 February 2010 schrieb Leo Franchi:
> > You just waste a signifincat part of the label to no information. :-(
> 
> Compact UI < Usable UI.
> 
> Enough said.
> 
> We don't like wasting space. We like making apps that are unintuitive
> and unusable even more. 
I assume this lacks (hopefully) a "don't".

> Besides, the definition of wasted implies that
> it is unneeded. 
Well, if the information can be selled more compact, than it's wasted space 
(this is probably basically why Jakob suggest prefixing ">>" or ">|" what 
means ffwd. resp. skip fwd and i know that because ...it's very intuitive?)

> Something that transmits useful information is not
> unneeded.
If amarok mostly targets ppl. who suffer from dementia, then you're absolutely 
right.
It needs to tell me "next:" everytime i look at it, because i forgot from last 
time.

If not, then
- my (personal) cultural background hints me that things on the right are not 
before (maybe this even survived my dementia)
- my experience tells me that what has recently been on the right is now in 
the middle and playing

> Once again, if they can read your mind, it is unnecessary.
> BUT users can't read your mind.
Thanks for the hint.

> I know i've already had this
> discussion with you---you can't assume that users will immediately
> know what you meant when you coded a UI.
If you take this as general rule, the internet needs to be shut down. 
Immediately.
Ppl. face web pages everyday they've never been to and need to click links 
that look whatever (there're some basic conventions... diminishing)
Either every link on a web page has to look like a button, or it's unusable.

> That's not how it works. UIs
> need to be simple and self-explanatory enough so users *understand*
> what they do without having to click stuff to figure it out and try to
> remember.
So "self-explanatory" like the 5 buttons on my walkman have been?
<< >> > ][ []

You're not asking for intuitivity, but for conventions.
The problem wit conventions is that carrying concepts across interfaces makes 
you stick.

Short fbwd ;-)

In the beginning there have been phono players.
You had a plate, started playing by lowering an arm, stopped playing by 
raising the arm (and potentially stop pushing the wheel ;-) and could change 
the current postion by raising the arm and lowering it somewhere else.

ffwd:
Philips brought you compact cassettes, sony the walkman.
No more arms.
Instead you had to push buttons and eventually hold them to navigate on the 
tape. It was slower, but it was practical.
Instead of printing "Vorwärts" "Rückwärts" "Stop" "Abspielen" "Pause" on each 
player in various languages, a simple iconic system has been invented for this 
(what probably saved a HUGE amount of money ;-)
The icons were not god-given - they were _invented_.
A triangle has not meant "start" before.

ffwd:
Ten years later (again) philips and sony presented compact discs.
They had buttons like the walkman, including to fast forward, but more 
important, there where new buttons to skip the current track in either 
direction. Pretty much like placing the arm, but much cooler.
Two more icons showed up.
A 7 segment display hinted the current "track" (sth, that had almost been 
forgotten during the cassette times...)

Later on the 7 seg display was removed and a little glimmy display could show 
informations about the current track (marquee effect... :)

ffwd:
end of the nineties we were presented with a fascinating algorithm that could 
compress music nearby unnotable and store a lot of it on PCs. (the algorithm 
is much older, but that's not so important here)
A tiny company name nullsoft brought a player for this particular kind of 
music (there were more, but winamp became famous)
In the beginning the player was exactly like the computer players for CDDAs. 
Same display, same buttons.

BUT: the music didn't exist physically anymore but as information in very fast 
memory.
Therefore at some time the ffwd/fbwd buttons where replaced by a slider that 
allowed you to navigate to a precise position anywhere in the tune.

This is how it is.

Now let's take a look back:

The stop buttons was required to detach the tape from the head to prevent 
damage during movement or esp. when moving the tape very fast through the 
ffwd/fbwd buttons.
Otherwise it's currently nothing but "pause + forget current position"

The skip fwd / skip bwd icons have been introduced to avoid printing their 
meaning in various languages. Also displaying dynamic (track) information was 
terribly inaffordable then.


You take these solutions for those restrictions that became convention and 
name them "self-explanatory" and intuitive, but THEY ARE NOT.
They are "just" conventions.
And the restrictions that justified them are no more existent.

The point is to query those conventions as they might block things - and as my 
grandpa _easily_ learned to use a cassette recorder instead of the phonoplayer 
from his youth and my dad learned to use a disc player instead of his tape 
drive, i myself easily slipped into the slider that replaced the ffwd/fbwd 
buttons. No problem.

Just by a "OMG, if we change things, nobody can use it anymore" attitude, the 
position slider should not exist and we should have the ffwd/fbwd buttons as 
we had on our walkmen... well and my grandpa wants his phono player back (and 
his dad in case probably wanted a little wheel to drive it ;-)

I hope i could explain that "clicking the track names" might be 
unconventional, but that does not necessarily mean it "weird".

Cheers
(really, it's late. No more mails from me tonight)