Re: Creating a task launcher.....
On Thu, Jul 07, 2005 at 03:36:29PM -0400, Stephen R Laniel wrote :
> On Thu, Jul 07, 2005 at 09:15:33PM +0200, Brice Méalier wrote:
> > > I'd say that we should just keep new users away from the
> > > command line. I do all my work there, but it ceased to be
> > > the best way for new users to interact with a computer about
> > > 15 years ago. The problem with the command line (just to
> > because win started to get market share at that time and gave users bad
> > habits....
>
> A GUI is not a 'bad habit.' It's the interface that most
> users are comfortable with. The command line is an intensely
> powerful gaping void: you look at it and ask, "Um ... what
> do I tell it to do?" I want to get a list of the files here;
> what do I type? 'ls' is not the first thing that comes to
> mind, much less 'ls -la'. I want to create a new document;
> 'vim' is not the first thing that comes to mind. The list
> goes on. It's nonintuitive. I suppose it could be made
> slightly more intuitive by making the command 'web browser'
> or 'word processor' do something, but that's not going to
> happen ("bash: web: command not found").
>
Sure a GUI is not a bad habit! far from that! but it has the drawback to
lower the "brain use" of the user... A computer is a tool which use you
must learn and unfortunately GUIs tend to avoid any learning from the
user side.
> > generally, the name of the program matches the name of the binary! the
> > best example is what you are telling above with firefox...
>
> Sure. But part of my point is that a new user will not know
> that the web browser is called 'firefox'. I installed
> Mozilla on a Windows client's machine a while ago and
> deleted the IE icon (I do that for all my clients nowadays,
> using Firefox instead). I didn't change the default icon
> title, so it still said "Mozilla." I left that client and
> hopped on the subway home. 30 minutes later I had an irate
> voicemail on my cell phone asking me, "WHAT IS 'MANZILLA'?"
> The name does not suggest what it does.
>
> Lesson: ever since then, I have changed the icon title to
> read 'web browser' or 'Internet'. Most new users DO NOT know
> what the term 'web browser' means, generically: they don't
> understand that there is a class of objects called 'web
> browsers' of which Internet Explorer and Mozilla and Firefox
> are instances.
>
> So that's the level of user that we're dealing with. We
> can't even expect most users to know what a 'web browser'
> is, much less to know that 'Firefox' does the same thing as
> IE, MUCH less to know that their web browser will launch
> if they type 'firefox' (not 'Firefox' or 'FIREFOX') at the
> command line. Much less that 'firefox &' is probably the
> command they actually want to run.
>
I have to agree definitively at this point.
But I think that if we get this e-mail that means the sender wants to
learn, so why not try to give him some useful hints even if he will not
use them, at least he'll be aware of.
I don't think that normal users will approach specialized mailing-lists.
> The command line is a hopeless loss for 99.5% of all users.
>
> > important information! BTW that remembers me the first (and lone) time I
> > tried to convert a pascal program to c using the program "p2c"
>
> The fact that you were trying to convert a Pascal program to
> C suggests that your level of experience is far past that of
> most new users. This is why the first thing that students at
> Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute learn
> is "You Are Not The User." We need to study how actual users
> behave, not base our UI judgments on what we ourselves find
> intuitive.
>
> Working as a Windows, OS X and Linux end-user support guy
> has really enlightened me.
>
> > I agree with you! I just wanted to pointed that in comparison to win the
> > filesystems is organized! and so a comparison of /usr/bin to c:\Program
> > Files seems to be not 100% relevant!
>
> Windows is mostly organized as well. Nearly all executables
> will appear under C:\Program Files, just as nearly all
> Linux executables appear under /usr/bin. Also, nearly all
> users' documents appear under C:\Documents and Settings.
> C:\Documents and Settings\All Users is not quite like /etc;
> you'll get a lot of /etc-type stuff under C:\winnt.
Yes initially windows is organized but you have to keep it organized as
well as some programs purely install in C:\
>
> Has anyone written a "directory conversion guide" for new
> users?
I think there is something in the debian reference guide about this and
if I remerber well this is well written (shortly and precisely enough to
get a good idea).
>
> > Please don't feel blame by my comments, this is not my goal! I just want
> > to give some tips to a new user and not to tell him that what you say is
> > wrong.
>
> No blame here. Just some ideas.
>
All right -;)
Best regards,
--
Brice Méalier
mealier_brice@yahoo.fr
Linux user nb. 372699
Debian Sarge
I would be pleased if you don't send me attachment using
proprietary file format (i.e. .doc, .xls). Use instead
universal file formats like text, pdf, TeX, OpenOffice.Org.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
or http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.fr.html
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