221–230 of 330 posts
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Getting on a plane would be a fairly common use case, and independent of the 'power' level of the user. Disclaimer: I don't own an iOS device, so don't know how intuitive it might or might not be.
Well, for plane use, it has "Airplane Mode" as the first option of the Settings app, so at least for that it's covered.
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I would say you're out of luck then. What good are those mkv files if you don't have an app to read them? There are a lot of things I'm used to doing on a computer that I can't do on an iPad. Everyone has their examples of things that make X inferior to Y. Apple has shown that they can be successful by offering less of "business as usual" while slowly introducing new ways of doing things. The only way to advance the…
I would say you're out of luck then. What good are those mkv files if you don't have an app to read them? I have a really nice app to read them called Media Player Classic -- I just don't have an app to manage them. Writing apps to manage every single file type I have is very inefficient compared to using a general purpose file manager. You abstract out often-used code rather than copy-pasting it all over the place,…
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Most "normals" I interact with are beginners every time they use the computer . They are not comfortable discovering anything. I can teach them something and be confident in them forgetting it by the next time I talk to them. Things like moving files around directories is black magic to them. Directories are black magic to them. The problem I see with this solution is two-fold: 1. The people who understand this stuff…
Oh my. That reminded me of a colleague of mine who thought I was doing "black magic" when I converted from "text to columns" in Excel. Guess what, she has a PhD in Geography. That really emphasizes your point. For me, the problem with the ribbon has been (the times I tried to use Office 2010) that there are some more "advanced" commands (like, inserting a cross-reference to a Figure or Table) which became quite hidde…
Also, do you realize that the Ribbon is customizable in Office 2010, in the same way toolbars were customizable in Office pre-2007?
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". I also try to keep in mind that I'm not typical. ... So when I judge a UI I literally stick my Mom on it... she's 68" Well she no more typical a computer user than you are I would think. I like to see a curve of typical computer users age distribution (but I understand it would be a little skewed if it's hard for the older generations to use computers). I feel that ribbon is designed for a select group of new user…
The only thing I felt missing that I needed from OSX Finder is "Rename All". Do you have any other examples of this?
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The only thing I felt missing that I needed from OSX Finder is "Rename All". Do you have any other examples of this?
Cut and pasting files would be useful, but that's about all I miss.
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Did you consider that you haven't missed these things because you aren't used to using them?
No, I don't think so. Every function given by this ribbon is available in Finder without buttons. I can give you the steps, if you'd like.
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And your suggestion is? How is the ribbon any different to a hierarchial menu bar? (See the Gnome drop-down menu or the iOS Settings Menu).
The problem has more to do with the excessive number of available commands. My suggestion is to cut the clutter and avoid hierarchical UI elements altogether, regardless of their nature.
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Do those users use the desktop shell at all though? In my experience with novice users (across platforms: Mac noobs are no better) is that they only know enough to launch apps. They never touch the desktop integration at all.
This is only because the Finder/Explorer has been made harder and harder to use. Apple's OSX Finder is a shocking UI abomination. Their old MacOS Finder was clear and simple - my wife would spend hours arranging her work in coloured folders, each of which opened in a window whose shape and position she had chosen, and was meaningful to her. It was a powerful tool that enabled her to arrange and group her work. Now, b…
You're absolutely right. I don't have the citation on me right now, but spatial mode has been found to be easier to grasp for new users in every single test ever. The only reason it was dropped was because (1) Windows Explorer, (2) power users whined about too many open windows and (3) a lot of people got used to URLs opening in the same window thanks to web browsers, so people sought to apply the same principles to file browsers.
Spatial mode used to be default on GNOME for a long time. There, too, it was dropped because of the same reasons.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_file_manager and http://www.bytebot.net/geekdocs/spatial-nautilus.html
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agree, in fact UI like this encourages a user to develop bad usage habits, which will remain with them for an indefinite amount of time until these behaviors are (if ever) unlearned.
What are bad usage habits? (since we're on topic: I'm an MS employee. I do not work on Windows Explorer)
Disclaimer: I'm a Windows and Mac OS X "power user" and I'm going to be rather critical of Apple who are seen as at the forefront of UI design. I'm probably going to get voted down for this. I'm a proponent of the Ribbon UI and I fucking hate toolbars in OS X. I use Outlook, Word, Excel and Windows Live Mail extensively. All of which have the ribbon UI. It turns out that for the sake of actually getting stuff done, t…