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And IMO, Handbreak is more complicated than CLI ffmpeg. It's really chaotic.
Meanwhile, every time Gnome makes UI adjustments along these lines, there's an outcry that it's dumbed downed, copying apple, removing features etc etc.
Its an entire desktop environment, its not as simple as choosing between two different apps. Although people who make this complaint should probably just use KDE, maybe they've used Gnome for a long time and don't want to change.
By using GNOME and staying with it as it changed, they suffered more changes than they would have by switching to KDE at any point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come on. "type ffmpeg, then hyphen i then the input filename then the output filename". I would've understood this when I was 8. Because I was super smart? No, because I was making a genuine effort.
The portion you've overlooked is there is an entire population of users out there who have never seen, nor used, a command line, and telling them to "just type this out" ignores all the background command line knowledge necessary to successfully "just type this out": 1) They have to know how to get to a command line somewhere/how (most of this group of users would be stymied right here and get no further along); 2) T…
But, if we assume the user has never seen a graphical application before, then likely all GUI tools will be useless too. What is clicking? What does this X do? What's a desktop again? I don't understand, why do I need 1 million pixels to change an mp3 to an avi? What does that window looking thing in the corner do? Oh no, I pressed the little rectangle at the top right and now it's gone, it disappeared. No not the one with the X, I think it was the other one.
Pretty much all computer use secretly relied on hundreds if not thousands of completely arbitrary decisions and functionality you just have to know. Of all of that, CLI tools rely on some of the least amount of assumptions by their nature - they're low fidelity, forced to be simple.
GNOME's libadwaita solves this beautifully. It's simple, nice looking, yet powerful. You could absolutely use it to make an ffmpeg front-end that's both fully featured and friendly to less technical users. But if your app can't, then another good option is to have a "simple mode" and "advanced mode". And IMO, Handbreak is more complicated than CLI ffmpeg. It's really chaotic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
if the UI is forcing me to look at these options before pressing Go, it is a signal that someone thought these were important to consider before i pressed Go. this is the gricean maxims of quantity and relation. the decision to ignore this signal is a learned behavior that you and i have, is all i’m saying
The average person doesn't even read error messages . They know how to ignore things and hit the button that goes forward just fine. If they choose not to try the program, that's different. They don't lack the skill. (A child might lack this skill but a child is curious enough to push on so it works out anyway.)
You seem comfortable with the idea that a child not having this learned skill. I don’t know why you don’t extend that empathy towards the inexperienced in general.
Meanwhile, every time Gnome makes UI adjustments along these lines, there's an outcry that it's dumbed downed, copying apple, removing features etc etc.
They are actually, literally, removing features. That's not an opinion, that's what is actually happening, repeatedly.
Now, maybe you say good riddance. Fine. However, it is indisputable that now the desktop is slightly less capable. The software can do less stuff than before.
i think what the author is characterizing as "free software" is probably better described as "software with bad UX"
The Venn diagram is a circle!
That's why I use 3D Max, Photoshop, and Excel. For the simplicity.
Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a shorter one. Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble, but figuring out what that use case is difficult. And defending that use case from the line of people who want "that + this little extra thing", or the "I j…
Overall, the development world does not intuitively understand the difficulty of creating good interfaces (for people that aren’t developers.) In dev work, the complexity is obvious, and that makes it easy for outsiders to understand— they look at the code we’re writing and say “wow you can read that?!” I think that can give developers a mistaken impression that other peoples work is far less complex than it is. With…
Nor can the design world, for that matter. They think that making slightly darker gray text on gray background using a tiny font and leaving loads of empty space is peak design. Meanwhile my father cannot use most websites because of this.