[TriLUG] Strange UI Problem....

Ilan Volow listboy at clarux.com
Thu Mar 4 02:49:11 EST 2004


On Mar 3, 2004, at 11:38 AM, Brian Weaver wrote:

> Jeremy,
>
> I just discovered the Gnome/GTK2 flames on the web prior to reading
> your e-mail. I was about to respond to the list, in part to apologize
> to the KDE folks. It does appear that all my issues are with respect
> to GTK2 apps. In particular Thunderbird and FireFox. Aside from Konsole
> they are really the only two other apps that I run with any 
> consistency.
>
> Now that I think about it the problem started with the 0.5 release of
> Thunderbird and 0.8 release of Firefox.
>
> The thing that really gripes me is that the left-to-right OK/Cancel 
> order
> only has about 10+ years of inertia behind it. I really wonder WTF the
> justification for the change was? Are they saying that Cancel is hit 
> more
> often then OK, and thus it should be the first choice? I've worked with
> computers for a long time now (it really gives me pause about how old I
> am now) and I've used a LOT of bad interface. Sometime BAD is better 
> than
> RIGHT as long as it is CONSISTENT! Yeah, we all like to have things 
> done
> the right way, but I'd hazzard a guess that 99% of the computers users
> don't give a hoot what right is, so long as it is consistent.
>
> I was hoping to setup a Linux box for my wife to facilitate her exodus
> from Windows. I'm not so sure now because little things like the button
> order, while they may seem insignificant, would potentially make the
> transition a negative experience. I guess I will either have to find
> a way to dynamically reverse the button order or hope that the 
> Gnome/KDE
> folks can come to some standard so it is all consistent.
>
> Inconsistency is the hallmark of a bad user experience.
>

(Thanks for the reference, Jeremy)

The whole issue is of Cancel/OK vs. Ok/Cancel goes back to the early 
days of Windows. There were two prime influences behind the original 
design of Windows: the fact that Microsoft was incompetent at designing 
user interfaces (contrary to popular belief in the linux community, the 
excellent quality of Microsoft usability is only surpassed by the 
excellent quality of Microsoft security), and the fact that they didn't 
want to be sued by Apple. Both of these reasons contributed to 
Microsoft's choice of Ok/Cancel.  The reason that Apple choose 
Cancel/OK is that western culture views Go Back/Stop as being to the 
left direction, and Go Ahead/Proceed as going to the right. For 
example:

--Your car's brake pedal that stops your car is on the left, the 
accelerator pedal that moves you ahead is on the right.
--To go back in time on an analog clock, you go counter-clockwise 
(left). To go ahead in time, you go clockwise (right).
--When you read a book, to go back a few pages, you move in the left 
direction. To read ahead, you go in the right direction.

I find that probably the best way to illustrate how awkward the design 
is when combined with computers is to imagine a web browser with the 
'Forward' button on the left and the 'Back' button on the right.


In regards to transitions, probably the worst thing an environment 
could do would be to attempt to make itself familiar to windows users 
and slavishly try to ape the windows UI. When something looks familiar, 
the user is lured into believing that it will act in exactly the same 
way as the thing that came before it, and this is not the case. In some 
way, something in the environment will act differently, and this will 
really knock the user for a loop. It has been remarked both on the list 
and elsewhere that Windows users have a harder time migrating to linux 
than those who never have used a computer at all, and the main reason 
for this is that those Windows users have been expecting that the linux 
environment that has been stupidly made to look like Windows will act 
just like Windows. The former Windows users' expectations end up 
getting violated, something that wouldn't happen on an unfamiliar 
system with few expectations to violate.

In a somewhat similar vein, you also run into a massive number of 
usability issues by trying to "unify" the two desktop environments. One 
environment will always behave in some way different from another. 
Ignorantly making icons from the two different desktop environments 
look the same style and putting programs from both environments in the 
same menu in attempt to fool the user into thinking there is a single 
environment is not going to change this. About a year ago during a 
discussion/flame war about Bluecurve, I said Bluecurve would be 
extremely problematic and gave the example of the dialog button 
ordering differences between environments as one of the shining 
examples of this. While some people, including those who work on a 
certain linux distribution (that shall go nameless to preserve the 
peace of the list), blew these concerns off as unfounded, or as being 
justified by many popular distributions doing the same "unified" thing 
in imitation, or as something that could eventually be changed with the 
luxury of time, I knew sooner or later the problems caused by Bluecurve 
would rear their ugly heads on the list.

Desktop linux as we currently know it was and still is designed by 
programmers and unix geeks, not by user interaction people. These 
usability problems are really a reflection of this.

On a completely different note, I was going to say this at some point 
in a separate e-mail to the list, but perhaps I should say it here. If 
I ever do anything outside of the context of the LUG that seems 
strange, or excessive, or counter to every open source philosophy, no 
one in the group should take it personally. I am simply doing what I 
think is right and in the best interests of desktop end-users around 
the world.

--
Ilan Volow
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!




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