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[Seb Ruiz]

On 8 February 2010 12:56, Thomas Lübking <thomas.luebking at web.de> wrote:
> 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)

Without trying to sound condescending, but knowing that I will:

tldr;


-- 
Seb Ruiz

http://www.sebruiz.net/
http://amarok.kde.org/