Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Linux GUI

Author:Eric Soroos
Posted:3/4/1999; 7:58:40 AM
Topic:DHTML MTTF!
Msg #:3535 (In response to 3530)
Prev/Next:3534 / 3536

I think that people are becoming somewhat more tolerant of bad UI, and generally more different UI's than they have had before. (Note that I'm not saying it's a good thing, I really dislike many of the UI details of Windows and KDE, as well as a few of the mac interface choices.) I'm from a somewhat minimalist school of design as expressed by Edward Tufte's books, The Visual Display of Quantative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations.

The reason that people are becoming more tolerant is that they are using the web and being bombarded by hordes of junk uis. One can't be non-tolerant and hope to get any information out of the web. Every single site has their own interface quirks, and as far as I can tell, no one has come up with the killer interface.

DHTML may change this, or it might make it worse. I cringed when I saw the screenshots of the broadband version of the mttf site, and not just because it took a long time to load. I cringed because of the multiple layers of tabbed dialog boxes. Tabbed dialogs are one of those features that I think is confusing, mainly because they are needlessly modal and information dense without being clear.

Of course, the ui of the broadband mttf is their choice. Given the current state in computing, I don't think arguing against tabbed dialogs is going to be any more effective than arguing against gifs of text on the web.

eric

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