6 ms·

All of that is great for us, the people who got into computing way back when. Then, computing became useful, and had to be used by people who don't like to twi

by rocqua 9y ago

All of that is great for us, the people who got into computing way back when. Then, computing became useful, and had to be used by people who don't like to twiddle with settings. It seems to be the case that those are in the vast majority. Moreover, there is a vocal minority of people that tweak settings, break something, and then start complaining / requiring support. The end result is that our preferences are no longer the majority and thus are no longer catered to.

KGIII 9y ago
My toaster still has a slider to select how long I want to cook it. I wrote a long reply to the other person, I think I summed it up there. You can feel free to expand the thread and read it. It's one of my better rants, if I do say so myself. Even Linux is impacted by this. I keep hearing complaints about flat design, I don't even know what that is. I just want my buttons back. New users don't actually have to push them. Just because a button exists doesn't mean Joe Sixpack has to push it. Maybe if he pushes it enough times, people will stop fixing his computer and he will learn to fix it himself. Then, with time, he can learn to stop breaking it. Not that long ago, I got some help to write some scripts to grab the entirety of the Ubuntu man pages and automatically convert them to PDF and provide an index for them. When I posed my question, explaining where I was stuck and what my goal was, the first questions where, effectively, "Why would you want to do that? Nobody wants to do that!" It's a horrible state of affairs. I'm considering moving to GhostBSD. At least they still have buttons.
- iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
  'My toaster still has a slider to select how long I want to cook it.' And this is great, simple UI that means you can use it without a manual. If we we're to liken a lot of "configurable" software to the toaster it would: * A resistance range setting that defined the max and min resistance ranges of the internal heating element, implicitly measured in ohms. * A resistance setting to defines the current resistance from 0 - 100% where the percentage set gets it's temperature from the range defined with the resistance range UI element. * A timer setter that allows you to set the time-to-cook value via a ISO 8601 formatted duration. etc.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Indeed, so give me the option for that. I don't mind paying for software. Hell, I used to pay for my browser. Or, you know, stop dumbing it down in the first place. When you design for the lowest common denominator, you get users that are the lowest common denominator. I get it, it makes good financial sense. However, those of us with an IQ higher than room temperature are left out in the cold. You had those options in there - you took 'em out. Put 'em back. Joe Sixpack will learn and improve. You'll get better and smarter users. You'll get users more confident and needing less support. Take an extra day and write good help documents, put the options back, and give ol' Joe a web form to query the FAQs. Ol' Joe will figure it out. I did. Joe can figure it out too. We all did, back in the day. If you don't give them incentive to learn, they're not going to learn. You're stuck with dumb users - forever. You don't want that, do you? Do you really want to have to keep telling Joe how to set up his email client? No? Well, give Joe incentive to learn how to set up his email client. When Joe calls your helpdesk line, say, "Hey, Joe - did you read the manual?" Give him a reason to mash those buttons until he becomes an expert button masher (also known as an admin). And, if you can't train Joe, you can use some pretty neat tools to lock his PC right down - and only let him do what you want him to do. If it's his cell phone, well - that's what he's got the restore option for. Ol' Joe will quickly learn to push buttons, fix his own problems, and actually understand what goes on inside that magic box - at least a little. Seriously, we did this for decades. User friendly is good, but it's gone too far when there aren't even configuration options, a close button, a home button, or a help file. DId y'all forget how to write help documents? There's some great examples out there. You can crib from those. I'm not kidding about VLC pretty much having it perfect. Load up VLC and have a look in the options. Open VLC > Click on Tools > Click on Preferences. Once you're there, have a look around. That's pretty great, right? It's not too overwhelming, now is it? That's not the best part. In the lower left, click on "All." It's right next to the Simple option - simple, like Ol' Joe. Click on that button and then take a peek at the options. It's a virtual cornucopia of button goodness. It has options for things they're probably just making up as they go along. It's pretty much perfect. Even a plain text editor should have options like that. While not a plain text editor, LibraOffice is actually another example of a fine set of options. But, VLC gets it just about perfect. Ol' Joe can still have the Simple options. Ol' Joe probably hasn't even got to touch them, as it comes with sensible defaults. VLC could be the goal, not the Facebook app for Android.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> Then, computing became useful, and had to be used by people who don't like to twiddle with settings. And then some people confused "twiddling with settings" with "learning to use a tool", and the completely stupid notion of "fully useful from first 5 seconds of encountering" software came into being.
- rocqua 9y ago
  An issue there is that often, making settings available is combined with having ill-conceived defaults. In these cases, "learning to use a tool" involves changing from the default configuration to a non-stupid config. Then, stupid defaults were conflated with 'having settings at all' which made people not want any settings.

by rocqua 9y ago

KGIII 9y ago

My toaster still has a slider to select how long I want to cook it. I wrote a long reply to the other person, I think I summed it up there. You can feel free to expand the thread and read it. It's one of my better rants, if I do say so myself. Even Linux is impacted by this. I keep hearing complaints about flat design, I don't even know what that is. I just want my buttons back. New users don't actually have to push them. Just because a button exists doesn't mean Joe Sixpack has to push it. Maybe if he pushes it enough times, people will stop fixing his computer and he will learn to fix it himself. Then, with time, he can learn to stop breaking it. Not that long ago, I got some help to write some scripts to grab the entirety of the Ubuntu man pages and automatically convert them to PDF and provide an index for them. When I posed my question, explaining where I was stuck and what my goal was, the first questions where, effectively, "Why would you want to do that? Nobody wants to do that!" It's a horrible state of affairs. I'm considering moving to GhostBSD. At least they still have buttons.

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
'My toaster still has a slider to select how long I want to cook it.' And this is great, simple UI that means you can use it without a manual. If we we're to liken a lot of "configurable" software to the toaster it would: * A resistance range setting that defined the max and min resistance ranges of the internal heating element, implicitly measured in ohms. * A resistance setting to defines the current resistance from 0 - 100% where the percentage set gets it's temperature from the range defined with the resistance range UI element. * A timer setter that allows you to set the time-to-cook value via a ISO 8601 formatted duration. etc.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Indeed, so give me the option for that. I don't mind paying for software. Hell, I used to pay for my browser. Or, you know, stop dumbing it down in the first place. When you design for the lowest common denominator, you get users that are the lowest common denominator. I get it, it makes good financial sense. However, those of us with an IQ higher than room temperature are left out in the cold. You had those options in there - you took 'em out. Put 'em back. Joe Sixpack will learn and improve. You'll get better and smarter users. You'll get users more confident and needing less support. Take an extra day and write good help documents, put the options back, and give ol' Joe a web form to query the FAQs. Ol' Joe will figure it out. I did. Joe can figure it out too. We all did, back in the day. If you don't give them incentive to learn, they're not going to learn. You're stuck with dumb users - forever. You don't want that, do you? Do you really want to have to keep telling Joe how to set up his email client? No? Well, give Joe incentive to learn how to set up his email client. When Joe calls your helpdesk line, say, "Hey, Joe - did you read the manual?" Give him a reason to mash those buttons until he becomes an expert button masher (also known as an admin). And, if you can't train Joe, you can use some pretty neat tools to lock his PC right down - and only let him do what you want him to do. If it's his cell phone, well - that's what he's got the restore option for. Ol' Joe will quickly learn to push buttons, fix his own problems, and actually understand what goes on inside that magic box - at least a little. Seriously, we did this for decades. User friendly is good, but it's gone too far when there aren't even configuration options, a close button, a home button, or a help file. DId y'all forget how to write help documents? There's some great examples out there. You can crib from those. I'm not kidding about VLC pretty much having it perfect. Load up VLC and have a look in the options. Open VLC > Click on Tools > Click on Preferences. Once you're there, have a look around. That's pretty great, right? It's not too overwhelming, now is it? That's not the best part. In the lower left, click on "All." It's right next to the Simple option - simple, like Ol' Joe. Click on that button and then take a peek at the options. It's a virtual cornucopia of button goodness. It has options for things they're probably just making up as they go along. It's pretty much perfect. Even a plain text editor should have options like that. While not a plain text editor, LibraOffice is actually another example of a fine set of options. But, VLC gets it just about perfect. Ol' Joe can still have the Simple options. Ol' Joe probably hasn't even got to touch them, as it comes with sensible defaults. VLC could be the goal, not the Facebook app for Android.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> Then, computing became useful, and had to be used by people who don't like to twiddle with settings. And then some people confused "twiddling with settings" with "learning to use a tool", and the completely stupid notion of "fully useful from first 5 seconds of encountering" software came into being.

rocqua 9y ago
An issue there is that often, making settings available is combined with having ill-conceived defaults. In these cases, "learning to use a tool" involves changing from the default configuration to a non-stupid config. Then, stupid defaults were conflated with 'having settings at all' which made people not want any settings.