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Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

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Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#151

Post by airstrike »

mark-r wrote: post #138
escapecharacter wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just wait until you get to the undo/redo stack! That's one of my favourite parts of a UI to program.

My experience is that undo/redo isn't something you tack on at the end of the project, it has to be baked into the infrastructure. Every action you take has to be delegated to an object that has all the information it needs to both do the action and undo it. Then you can just keep a stack of those objects and call them as necessary.

Fortunately I'm using iced which is an implementation of The Elm Architecture so undo/redo is just a matter of keeping track of which messages were sent and reversing them as needed.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#152

Post by bee_rider »

layer8 wrote: post #127
bee_rider wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I lightly disagree. Phones are just not good for complex use-cases. I don’t want a context menu on my phone, the depth of interactions in a browser for example should be… slide the webpage this way, slide it that way, poke a link (or, I guess, to be leave room for what I’m doing now, poke a text box to write in it). Dumbing down the UI was a good idea.

We do have all sorts of inconsistent “context menus” now on mobile. Sometimes after you select something, sometimes as items under the share button, sometime when you actually long press, sometimes a menu appears when you tap an item, sometimes as action items that appear when you slide an item to a side. And even for a single of those variations, different variants with different looks exist, etc. A uniform way to “…

Interesting.

Actually, this conversation has made me realize I only do this sort of “give me more options” interaction in Safari (long press) and Panic Prompt (double tap). I think I hadn’t noticed the inconsistency because 2 is not very many, and also the Panic Prompt behavior is a sort of nice analogy to the typical Linux terminal behavior.

Still though, only two programs and the inconsistency is immediate, haha.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#153

Post by themacguffinman »

nine_k wrote: post #146
southernplaces7 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that Amazon's UI could garner more sales and reconstruct more of its slowly fading popularity if it simply stopped being such a dumpster fire of bad design, confusion, chaos, searches that barely work and of course, rampant links to attempts at sales fraud. The confusion, coupled with Amazon's reputation inertia, does probably drive some bulk sales metrics, but it's a poison pill of scrounging what you…

What are these sites that are simply better? Also, Amazon's retail empire is very much buttressed by its speedy delivery service, and thus warehouses and the truck fleet. A much better web site sometimes cannot compete with next-day delivery. (And sometimes can, of course!)

Etsy is pretty slick, although lately I've heard it has similar (but not the same) product/seller trust issues as Amazon.

iHerb has a somewhat Amazon-like UI but noticeably less cluttered and more structured. It highlights a minimum "best by" date, which is also a guarantee that goes beyond pure UI design but provides the kind of customer-friendly interface that informs rather than confuses.

I usually find Webstaurant product listings pretty informative and much cleaner.

From Big Tech, Google & Apple may not have a comparable physical goods marketplace but the marketplaces they do have - books and applications - are much cleaner and more focused than their Amazon counterparts.

Of course, the gold standard is McMaster-Carr.

I know Amazon is more successful than those examples. Microsoft Windows is also much more successful than its competitors, but I don't think most people would see that and argue "the point of an OS/software is not to be easy to use or convenient or understandable". Certainly it's not the point of Windows but I'd say that's because competition involves factors unrelated to quality and quality is multi-dimensional, not because quality is "not the point".

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#155

Post by NoNoisle »

slackfan wrote: post #154

RIP. The one button mouse was significantly underrated. Using the keyboard keys as modifier keys to the mouse was ergonomically great, and anybody who complains about the mouse seems to never really understand how that system worked.

Why allow the user to do things with one hand when you can force them to use two hands ux is far worse imo

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#156

Post by leptons »

gymbeaux wrote: post #84
themacguffinman wrote: post #52

His Amazon stint was mentioned in Steve Yegge's famous "Platforms" rant [1] where the reason for his departure was described less amicably: > Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every god…

My main gripe with Amazon is how slow it is. It takes me like 30 seconds to change my shipping address and payment method before placing an order. I always assume it’s because they’re using Glacier on AWS to drive that functionality.

That sounds more like your hardware/internet than it does Amazon's fault - I have never had any delay when changing address or payment method while placing an order, and I place a lot of orders on Amazon.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#157

Post by leptons »

chongli wrote: post #89
bluGill wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not doubting you were productive with it. However that does not make it better, it just makes it what you know. User experience experts have studied this for a long time, and they all conclude that you need more than one button. (there isn't agreement on the best number as there are some trade offs, but one is clearly not enough) The world has a real problem with people arguing what they know is best without any…

I have some older relatives who were actually able to use a computer back then, thanks to the simplicity and brilliant design of Classic Mac OS. Now they are essentially shut out of computing for the rest of their lives. They can just barely use their cell phones to make calls and send the odd text. They do all their banking over the phone. There are tons of people like this. Apple used to be the absolute market lead…

What about having 2 buttons vs 1 button makes something "inaccessible"? If anything having 2 buttons makes the options that are in the context of the current application more accessible.

But people are incurious, stupid, and just dull-witted, I guess? So you really want the rest of us to have to suffer with 1 button because the lower end of the bell-curve can't handle 2 buttons for reasons related to stupidity?

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#158

Post by chongli »

leptons wrote: post #157
chongli wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some older relatives who were actually able to use a computer back then, thanks to the simplicity and brilliant design of Classic Mac OS. Now they are essentially shut out of computing for the rest of their lives. They can just barely use their cell phones to make calls and send the odd text. They do all their banking over the phone. There are tons of people like this. Apple used to be the absolute market lead…

What about having 2 buttons vs 1 button makes something "inaccessible"? If anything having 2 buttons makes the options that are in the context of the current application more accessible . But people are incurious, stupid, and just dull-witted, I guess? So you really want the rest of us to have to suffer with 1 button because the lower end of the bell-curve can't handle 2 buttons for reasons related to stupidity?

People who don't come to use a computer for the first time until middle age or later tend to struggle mightily. I'm not sure why, but they seem to have a strong aversion to experimenting with the system. I face this issue almost every day with my 74-year-old father and his iPhone. He can only do the tasks which I explicitly teach him and anything new (like changing a setting he's never changed before) requires me to show him the steps. The fact that changing a different setting in the Settings app is an almost-identical process never occurs to him. He just asks for help every time.

Back in the Classic Mac OS days he did just fine with a 1-button mouse. He was able to click on and interact with everything and got what he needed out of the computer. A 2-button mouse is just utterly baffling to him. It turns every single thing on the screen into a fork in the road: do I left-click this or right-click it?

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#159

Post by slackfan »

NoNoisle wrote: post #155
slackfan wrote: post #154

RIP. The one button mouse was significantly underrated. Using the keyboard keys as modifier keys to the mouse was ergonomically great, and anybody who complains about the mouse seems to never really understand how that system worked.

Why allow the user to do things with one hand when you can force them to use two hands ux is far worse imo

A valid argument only in a world where single-hand chorded keyboards are the only interface for CLIs.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#160

Post by leptons »

chongli wrote: post #158
leptons wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about having 2 buttons vs 1 button makes something "inaccessible"? If anything having 2 buttons makes the options that are in the context of the current application more accessible . But people are incurious, stupid, and just dull-witted, I guess? So you really want the rest of us to have to suffer with 1 button because the lower end of the bell-curve can't handle 2 buttons for reasons related to stupidity?

People who don't come to use a computer for the first time until middle age or later tend to struggle mightily. I'm not sure why, but they seem to have a strong aversion to experimenting with the system. I face this issue almost every day with my 74-year-old father and his iPhone. He can only do the tasks which I explicitly teach him and anything new (like changing a setting he's never changed before) requires me to…

My 72 year old mother installs her own video cards and has a mouse with 5 buttons. YMMV, I guess.

The 1 button mouse was not superior in any way, and the people that get confused by a mouse with more than 1 button probably should never look at a web page with more than one thing to click. Did your father ever drive a car? Is he aware there's more than one pedal and lever to use? Did he ever find his way to the windshield wipers or did you just drive around with the rain obstructing the view? I'm genuinely curious how such a person could function in this world in the last 80 years.

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