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The solution to the "too many options" problem is to organize the options better, not to remove options. Every single function in Excel, or Photoshop, is there
by PhasmaFelis 10y ago
The solution to the "too many options" problem is to organize the options better, not to remove options.
Every single function in Excel, or Photoshop, is there because someone needs it. Should we leave those people out in the cold? Should we fragment major applications into dozens of sub-versions, each with a single specialized feature set, and force people who need more than one to juggle multiple programs?
I can get behind the idea of a "lite" program and a full-featured program in any given category. And, indeed, there are plenty of simple image manipulation programs for people who don't need all of Photoshop. (I'm not sure if there's an equivalent for Excel, but I'm also not sure Excel needs any changes to be accommodating to very basic spreadsheet use.) What's the benefit in removing options that someone is using?
- Bartweiss 10y agoI have a lot of respect for the walled garden design pattern. It's very rarely the right decision to remove options, but it's often the right decision to hide them. Even power users apply 10% of the features 90% of the time, and those are the features that deserve hotkeys and big obvious buttons. Other options can live comfortably behind buttons like "One Time Configuration Settings" or "PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOU WANT, DON"T CLICK" - there's no reason that Insert mode in word needs a bumpable hotkey. But they should still be there. There's nothing worse than a program that obviously supports an operation, but has removed your ability to do it any way except a few presets. Of course, all of this conflates 'professional' software like Excel and Photoshop with 'casual' software, but even in the casual case there's a lot to be said for not actually removing features.