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> I think that it's easy to build interfaces that are friendly to both power users and non-power-users All of the software I have ever used fits into one of th

> I think that it's easy to build interfaces that are friendly to both power users and non-power-users All of the software I have ever used fits into one of three categories: * Tipped in favor of power users and frustrating to laymen * Tipped in favor of laymen and frustrating to power users * Frustrating to both laymen and power users If it's so easy, what's a good example of software that rides the line well? EDIT: And even within this dichotomy both groups are pretty fuzzy. Is a layman someone who doesn't know how something works, or someone who just wants to do the basics? Is a power-user someone who wants to customize, or someone who wants to optimize?

emj 6y ago
The groups are of course even less defined than in your edit, I consider my self to be in the group: Just make it work, but enable me to discover what went wrong. I think it takes to many development hours to make your GUI discoverable. The question is how to make good abstraction, how can you make the GUI use the same API as the CLI interface and how do you connect them in a meaningfull way. Network-manager really tried to do this, came 80% of the way imho.
fsckboy 6y ago
I really like your 3 tipped in favor of's. > If it's so easy, what's a good example of software that rides the line well? I agree with you that the GP was wrong to claim that it's easy. But here is a way to get something better than we have, and that is, GUI control panels that read-and-writes the same text config files that the user can, and do so in a cooperative way. For example, if the grammar of the config file is such that there is NOT-more-than-one-way-to-do-it, then it doesn't matter if either a human or software updates the file. and if you want the UI to squelch the noisy details of what's happening, that's fine, but keep the log and make sure it's easy to get to.
fouric 6y ago
> All of the software I have ever used fits into one of three categories: I think that almost every piece of software ever written is "bad", and that the majority is even worse at the level of "terrible" - so I agree with you! I just don't think that contradicts my point. I should clarify - "easy" meaning "if you think about it, it's relatively obvious what should be done". One of those things is good, pervasive, in-tool documentation - which takes a lot of effort, even if it's not a "hard problem" in the sense of being intellectually tricky. > If it's so easy, what's a good example of software that rides the line well? Firefox. Firefox is very easy to use as a non-technical user, and has a relatively high skill cap (used to be higher with XUL/XPCOM, but even now you can do useful things relatively easily with the WebExtensions model). The reason why there aren't more examples (even things that I absolutely love, like Emacs) is because (1) commercial software development is optimized for selling things (at the expense of power user (and often layman) usability), (2) open-source software devs rarely care about user-friendliness and/or aren't willing to write good docs, and (3) neither group seems to have the presence of mind to do the meta-analysis about why existing software isn't good. ...or, so I claim. I'm willing to be shown that I'm wrong, and change my mind accordingly - but as the result of a nice debate and not some malicious emotional manipulation, like what the poster I was replying to was doing.
- reificator 6y ago
  > > If it's so easy, what's a good example of software that rides the line well? > Firefox. Firefox is very easy to use as a non-technical user, and has a relatively high skill cap (used to be higher with XUL/XPCOM, but even now you can do useful things relatively easily with the WebExtensions model). I wrote my original comment in Firefox. I don't think that any browser can meet the needs of both groups. A very non-exhaustive list of Firefox issues for laymen: * URLs are fundamentally frustrating for laymen. Full stop. If your browser exposes URLs, it's a phishing-filled, typo-squatted, and incredibly confusing experience for the average person. N.B. I am against recent efforts to "kill the URL", though I certainly empathize with the desire. * If a site has an SSL cert, it gets a lock and says "connection secure", and if it doesn't then there's a scary security warning. There are millions of sites that are fine to browse read-only in http, and there are millions of scam sites available over https. Again, note that I am pro everyday encryption, my issue here is to do with asserting (in)security on only the axis of whether a CA issued a cert to that domain name. * The browser extension permission model is not at all useful. Benevolent extensions that use exactly the common-sense permissions they need show a big scary list of permissions. Malicious extensions often show the exact same set of permissions as a benevolent one. Imagine if your toothbrush, dental floss, trashcan, shower curtain and shampoo required you to individually confirm to the cashier that you want to buy them because they require access to your bathroom. And then imagine your dental floss got an automatic update to record video of you in the shower and upload it to pornhub. It's absurd that we expect the average person to navigate this nonsense. Meanwhile, here's a very non-exhaustive list of Firefox issues for power users. Most of these are issues I have myself. * The old extensions API has been removed and the new one is much more restrictive in what it can accomplish. There's still not a download manager or tree-style tabs extension that checks all the boxes I want, even though they existed in the past. * It comes bundled with Pocket and Mozilla have shown a willingness to automatically install literal ads. For a TV show that I've heard is about computer security! * I installed a web clipper application to clip markdown. Except that it's not allowed to save files anywhere but my downloads folder, so if I want to clip straight to my notes archive I have to use a symlink. * The browser extension permission model is not at all useful. Sound familiar? It's absurd that we expect even power users to navigate this nonsense.

emj 6y ago

The groups are of course even less defined than in your edit, I consider my self to be in the group: Just make it work, but enable me to discover what went wrong. I think it takes to many development hours to make your GUI discoverable. The question is how to make good abstraction, how can you make the GUI use the same API as the CLI interface and how do you connect them in a meaningfull way. Network-manager really tried to do this, came 80% of the way imho.

fsckboy 6y ago

I really like your 3 tipped in favor of's. > If it's so easy, what's a good example of software that rides the line well? I agree with you that the GP was wrong to claim that it's easy. But here is a way to get something better than we have, and that is, GUI control panels that read-and-writes the same text config files that the user can, and do so in a cooperative way. For example, if the grammar of the config file is such that there is NOT-more-than-one-way-to-do-it, then it doesn't matter if either a human or software updates the file. and if you want the UI to squelch the noisy details of what's happening, that's fine, but keep the log and make sure it's easy to get to.

fouric 6y ago

> All of the software I have ever used fits into one of three categories: I think that almost every piece of software ever written is "bad", and that the majority is even worse at the level of "terrible" - so I agree with you! I just don't think that contradicts my point. I should clarify - "easy" meaning "if you think about it, it's relatively obvious what should be done". One of those things is good, pervasive, in-tool documentation - which takes a lot of effort, even if it's not a "hard problem" in the sense of being intellectually tricky. > If it's so easy, what's a good example of software that rides the line well? Firefox. Firefox is very easy to use as a non-technical user, and has a relatively high skill cap (used to be higher with XUL/XPCOM, but even now you can do useful things relatively easily with the WebExtensions model). The reason why there aren't more examples (even things that I absolutely love, like Emacs) is because (1) commercial software development is optimized for selling things (at the expense of power user (and often layman) usability), (2) open-source software devs rarely care about user-friendliness and/or aren't willing to write good docs, and (3) neither group seems to have the presence of mind to do the meta-analysis about why existing software isn't good. ...or, so I claim. I'm willing to be shown that I'm wrong, and change my mind accordingly - but as the result of a nice debate and not some malicious emotional manipulation, like what the poster I was replying to was doing.

reificator 6y ago
> > If it's so easy, what's a good example of software that rides the line well? > Firefox. Firefox is very easy to use as a non-technical user, and has a relatively high skill cap (used to be higher with XUL/XPCOM, but even now you can do useful things relatively easily with the WebExtensions model). I wrote my original comment in Firefox. I don't think that any browser can meet the needs of both groups. A very non-exhaustive list of Firefox issues for laymen: * URLs are fundamentally frustrating for laymen. Full stop. If your browser exposes URLs, it's a phishing-filled, typo-squatted, and incredibly confusing experience for the average person. N.B. I am against recent efforts to "kill the URL", though I certainly empathize with the desire. * If a site has an SSL cert, it gets a lock and says "connection secure", and if it doesn't then there's a scary security warning. There are millions of sites that are fine to browse read-only in http, and there are millions of scam sites available over https. Again, note that I am pro everyday encryption, my issue here is to do with asserting (in)security on only the axis of whether a CA issued a cert to that domain name. * The browser extension permission model is not at all useful. Benevolent extensions that use exactly the common-sense permissions they need show a big scary list of permissions. Malicious extensions often show the exact same set of permissions as a benevolent one. Imagine if your toothbrush, dental floss, trashcan, shower curtain and shampoo required you to individually confirm to the cashier that you want to buy them because they require access to your bathroom. And then imagine your dental floss got an automatic update to record video of you in the shower and upload it to pornhub. It's absurd that we expect the average person to navigate this nonsense. Meanwhile, here's a very non-exhaustive list of Firefox issues for power users. Most of these are issues I have myself. * The old extensions API has been removed and the new one is much more restrictive in what it can accomplish. There's still not a download manager or tree-style tabs extension that checks all the boxes I want, even though they existed in the past. * It comes bundled with Pocket and Mozilla have shown a willingness to automatically install literal ads. For a TV show that I've heard is about computer security! * I installed a web clipper application to clip markdown. Except that it's not allowed to save files anywhere but my downloads folder, so if I want to clip straight to my notes archive I have to use a symlink. * The browser extension permission model is not at all useful. Sound familiar? It's absurd that we expect even power users to navigate this nonsense.