Let's Kill the Hard Disk Icon 613
Kellym writes "The desktop metaphor is under attack these days. Usability experts and computer scientists like Don Norman, David Gelernter and George Robertson have declared the metaphor "dead." The complexities blamed on the desktop metaphor are not the fault of the metaphor itself, but of its implementation in mainstream systems. The default hard disk icon is part of the desktop metaphor. And the icon is the cause of the complexity created by the desktop"
"The" hard disk icon? (Score:0, Insightful)
It really doesn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, in the end it doesn't really matter. Why? Because there are either people who understand why this is wrong and therefore it doesn't matter to them, or there are people whose understanding of a computer is one that it would require more then changing the hard drive icon to make them undestand.
That, and I'm willing to bet that neither of these sorts of people really care one way or the other.
Well, it's just my opinion I suppose, and you have the right to disagree. But I've always thought the recursiveness of the desktop didn't really matter.
Yah right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me old fashioned, but I for one am _not_ baffled by the vast regions of "vague space" that my file systems offer me. I don't want hundreds of stacked desktops for everything I do. This might be nice for Joe Random Luser, but if you intend to do _LOTS_ of things with your computer, and interconnect them, having the power of a file system at your disposal helps a lot.
It is possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate via the mouse.
Yeah, that's the way it goes - the same "usability experts" who have brought us the "tree control for everything" metaphor that totally sucks in large directory trees now want to oversimplify even more. Perhaps, if the mouse is incapable of filling your needs, you should consider alternatives... such as the keyboard and a sensible autocompletion. Every time I see someone use a keyboard based navigation tool (Windows Commander comes to my mind, or bash completion), they're about ten times faster than click-move-click-move sequences.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I missed the point. I hope so, then the article would make sense.
In my opinion the whole desktop metaphore is flawed. The screen should just be a view of the hard disk, but each user should have their own namespace on the disk and not be able to even see others files, or there system files without running special tools.
The problem with windows is that sometimes "My Computer" is a subdirectory of the disk and sometimes the disk is a sub-item of My Computer. It confuses me and I'm supposed to know what I'm doing!
harddrives (Score:1, Insightful)
That said, "hiding" the harddrive behind a layer of abstraction - the fs directory structure - works just fine. Why break it? You gotta arrange files SOEMWHERE, and the unix concept of directory tree with mount points works really fine.
It's only the windows world where this is still a problem (mutliple hd's etc).
Re:"The" hard disk icon? (Score:1, Insightful)
You are probably confusing the two.
I can one one HD and 10 FS on them (
You must understand the technology to use it (Score:4, Insightful)
My motorbike has an oil light on it.
It comes on when the bike is running out of oil so I know when to put more in. To run a motorbike I mush know how to do this and (basicly) how the engine works. (Unless I want to be totaly reliant on a mechanic)
A computer is exactly the same.
To use it, you must know basicly how it works.....such as what a hard disk is! You cant oversimplify!
Re:"The" hard disk icon? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the real problem I see with the article is they don't suggest how users would deal with partitioning their space if one got rid of the harddrive icon. What I mean is, suppose I create a new directory under my root desktop, how do I specify which harddisk it should be on to better divide the free space I have on each disk? Surely they wouldn't propose that Mac end users should play around with auto mount lists as is done in the UNIX world?
I suppose one solution would be to use logical volumes to treat all harddrives on a system as one single volume, but if so that's a much bigger change than just eliminating the hard-disk icon, and the implications of it should be better explored (if that's the sort of solution they were going for).
Personally, I dont think anyone is particularly confused by hard-disk icons, and think the article is just blowing smoke...The article never really tries to back up its arguments or give real-world alternatives except at a very superficial level.
huh??? why? (Score:2, Insightful)
As to the limitations of the desktop - isn't the desktop contents just a directory on the drive anyway?
The mouse can't leae the desktop? sure it can - if you have virtual desktops - I just hover my mouse at one of the screen edges and it flips to the next panel. I use virtual desktops to access the multitude of application windows I have open, not to organize my filing system and have it cluttered with a zillion icons - I'd never be able to find anything!
As another poster here said, power users who understand the file system on their machines don't have a problem with it.
.
I'd love greater abstraction (Score:4, Insightful)
At the moment my other half knows what a floppy disk is (it looks like a floppy disk, and you can put files on it). She knows that the "hard disk" is a "big floppy disk inside the computer", and that she should copy from the later to the former whenever she needs to keep a safe copy. This is a good thing, because she knows where her stuff is, and so do I (as sys admin). As soon as you start blurring the lines, it makes it harder for people to control their own files.
I think it's right to be pushing the state of the art in the interface. However, I have this conservative feeling that the current status quo matches well to the actual reality of buggy software and hw/sw failures. Once we cross over into "you dont need to know that" space, we better be sure that we actually don't need to know it, otherwise we'll be SOL.
Mac was the first? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now KDE, Windows 9x, and many other use the 'Desktop' as the 'root' of the system. You'll notice that this trick is only performed by the 'userland' and not the actual system. This is because it's common sense. Your computer doesn't want to look for things starting from a folder/directory/area that is actually buried deep within the system!
I say, banish the 'Desktop'! It confuses users. Teach the file tree! Standardize the file tree!
No more systems where programs store themselves anywhere! No more systems that show the drive under the Desktop! No more systems that show other things on the same level as the drive!
Why confuse users? Teach them;
"This is
"This is
"This is
"But this is your Home/My Documents/Desktop. There are others similar to yours, but this one is yours."
"However, it doesn't sit on top of the rest of the system!"
Maybe I don't get it. I thought it would be easier to teach new users things they already understand.
"This is the desktop, it's the top level, well kinda, it's actually in
good for some, bad for most (Score:5, Insightful)
I reccomend to new users to save files they dont want to lose on their desktop just because its so much easier to remember where it is. eventually it WILL get cluttered, but its a good temp solution until they're more at ease with the hard drive, and finding their way through it. I can just imagine how lost some people would feel without their desktop and most used files staring back at them when they turn on their computers.
I can accept that there are some people who feel the desktop and hard drive icon metaphor are out dated, but i fail to see how their preference should override other peoples prefs.. instead of "killing" something you don't aggree with, how about encouraging an implamentation to have it or not, depending on your settings?
i dunno, to me its like saying "oh i can ride a bike now, so training wheels should be abolished, they only get in the way now".
its short sighted and biased, and only makes things harder for those who are just starting out.
Re:Yah right... (Score:5, Insightful)
a desktop is a flat directory (Score:4, Insightful)
Once you see it that way you realize immediately that this is very limited. Directory depth is there for a reason. Searching is easier, both for the computer and for human mind, once a certain number of elements is exceeded ( for the human mind that number is about five to eight)
If all the information the user needs can be stored in six to eight directories in a logical way, eliminating death may help useability. For users with more complex needs, this is a very bad idea.
Do people really use desktops for files? (Score:3, Insightful)
This article is calling for the redesigning of basic filesystem operations because of an overly misused feature that a few GUI systems have. The "everything is a desktop" idea woudl be impossible to implement on anything that relys on non GUI systems. It would also mean that practically every application on earth would have to be redesigned to accomidate this filesystem method.
Rather than change everything to accomidate better understanding of this overly used feature, why not get rid of it? Teach people about the way computers really work with files, rather than keeping them in the dark about whats going on.
Give a NeXT style GUI system a chance, try WindowMaker or Blackbox, or if you are on Windows install Litestep. Give it some time and you will realize how poinless having files on the desktop really is.
Flawed premise - all people do not think alike (Score:2, Insightful)
No matter how much we condense ourselves down into bell curves and types, we will always be infinitely diverse, and how we interact with each other and our tools will always be a very personal thing.
That being said, I'd like to do some research into teaching people enough science and art to begin with so that whatever interface they come across will quickly become easy for them. This is already the case with most geeks, and I don't accept the idea that we are somehow gifted, or that the so-called average joe must be provided with a toy interface if they ever hope to get anything out of computers.
I wager that as long as we assume users are stupid, they will continue to be.
Hard drives should be more like RAM modules. (Score:3, Insightful)
The user should not need to understand the notion of a filesystem. "Advanced" users should only need to know that they can plug in a hard drive and know that the OS will automatically format and integrate it into the system. Need more disk space to store MP3s? Simply add a disk, reboot, and have your space automatically split across the second drive.
Users should only have the concept of a Home folder (let's not call it a directory). The user can place all of her data in this folder. Advanced users can create subfolders if they so choose, but the UI should be able to automatically group files in a single folder by type if the user doesn't create one.
Users should not be concerned with OS files, the actual files used to store .EXE and Application files, etc.
Mac OS X is the closest to this. Your home directory contains all your data and application preference files. I recently lost a hard drive, but had a nightly backup of my home directory. I simply reinstalled OS X and the applications I use, and *voila* everything is back to normal -- no importing bookmarks, restoring my e-mail client configuration, etc. Users of KDE/GNOME are enjoying similar benefits.
Windows has a ways to go, but for starters it can get rid of the idiotic "drive letter" concept. At least with UNIX you can mount a separate disk drive into the global filesystem. Windows 2000 provides this equivalent feature finally, but only if you use NTFS. I doubt Windows XP Home encourages end users to use one "C:" drive and mount other disks as a folder, but it should.
Naturally, power users, system administrators, programmers, etc., still would benefit from the concept of a filesystem. But the millions of end-users needn't be bothered with it.
Oh please $deity, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
At this time of writing I have a grand total of 4(four) icons on my desktop. Only one of these is a shortcut. I have 12 more shortcuts on my taskbar (so, I use Windows. Sue me. ;o) ). One of the more used icons on my desktop is the one opening the dazzling labyrinth that is my file-system.
I've never really caught on to the desktop-concept. Maybe it's just me.. The desktop is the background for the windows opened by the applications I run. The harddisk on the other hand is the storage for my files (filing-cabinet anyone..?).
The desktop is a metaphor for a physical thing. And a bad one at that. As a lot of UI-design books will tell you one should be very careful when trying to use metaphors. Have a look at Interface Hall of Shame [iarchitect.com] for some examples.
Why do the author of the above article seem to think that multiplying an already bad interface will make it better? And even if the metaphor was a good one I've yet to see office-workers with e.g. a desk per client..
The problem with finding the next great interface is that the fundamentals in a computer-system is not about to change. We will have (and need) a lot of files (information split into little logical parts) for a long time to come. There is no way around this. Abstracting the storage-space and placing the files on seperate desktops instead of having them in folders accessible from anywhere does not change this fact.
Re:"The" hard disk icon? (Score:2, Insightful)
Obviously this is a comment from a Mac user. I don't mean this as a flame. The idea presented basically tries to maximize ease of use to the computer illiterate with no regard for how much it hurts actual functionality. Apple has been tdoing this for years. They hide any real information from the user to make things easier on them. They got rid of the CLI, the next logical step is to remove the filesystem.
Again, I'm not trying to mac bash here, I even suggest macs to people who say all they want to do is browse the web and read e-mail. But the more you really want to use a computer, you realize that the more information you can get your hands on the better. This desktop idea would only serve to let people use the very basic functions of a computer, but it will never let them get any further than that.
Clarity, stability, manageability etc. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is all too common these days to have strange software, always in state of change and instability, to steal ("embed") other software to show some things ("Documents", "directories", "files", "web pages",
All the computing should return back into the days when the only way to manage computers was simple physical files and directories and independent applications. Even "Joe Luser" could understand that. You have a ".whatever" file, you can "open" it with "whatever" application. That's simple enough. You can see files with "file manager", you can write documents with "Typewriter", you can blowse the remote net with "Browser" throught the connection "network".. For more advanced users that would still leave the power to control everything, have options for "linking and embedding" as necessary and appropriate.
This nut talk about desktops, blurred storage concepts and leased software is pure crap. Sure it might confuse Average Joes enough to pay even more for nothing in the short sight, but it just doesn't work for everything. Not everybody uses the computer for the same purposes in the same way. There really isn't any sense to restricting usage of a general purpose machine with artificial limits (desktops), buggy sw/hw (display adapters, drivers), physical devices (monitor/flat panels) and messed up concepts about data and applications.
Aren't the GUIs there for communicating with users? Isn't the OS there as a base platform to run stuff on? Shouldn't somebody write a "Joe Really Dumb" application to act as a GUI for those confused with logical storage and general computing concepts? They could then limit themselves with that application to two icons and a power button if anything more is too complicated.
Oh well, maybe I missed the point completely, or this confuse-and-conquer is just a business plan for somebody.. Whatever, it sounds like crap anyway.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
smoking what? (Score:0, Insightful)
What the author proposes is similar to 'killing' the index in a book, instead choosing to spread the pages out on the floor
The file system of a harddrive is equatable to a file system in a file cabinet.
The 'desktop' is the workspace where you place the file(s) you are working on.
It's as simple as that.
Confused user (Score:2, Insightful)
Root of the system? What do you mean?
/etc where your configuration data is stored!"
"This is
Why is it called etc?
/usr - you'll find the actual programs and more there!"
"This is
Why is it called usr? Are there more programs in proc?
"But this is your Home/My Documents/Desktop. There are others similar to yours, but this one is yours."
Why do I have a desktop inside my documents? Sholdn't the documents be on the desktop? And so many of them? This is so complicated.
"However, it doesn't sit on top of the rest of the system!"
What top? What was the root again?
Re:New Xerox Palo Alto for 3D usage metaphors? (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine getting nauseated and throwing up from trying to find some file you stored "somewhere near - I'm sure that document is somewhere near here!"
3D doesn't work for everyone - virtual reality, real nausea.
Michael
Not mutualy exclusive, surely (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny, I always thought it was complementary to the desktop metaphor.
If you're looking for ease of use for a limited set of functions, by all means put icons on the desktop, or group then into function-related folders on the desktop, or whatever. Have more than one desktop each with its own set of icons or folders for mutually exclusive functions? By all means. But do provide a reasonable way for system managers to easily organise the functions in a way that makes sense from the user's point of view. To some extent, this is already done when you (as end-user and system manager of your own personal Wintel box) install an intelligently-packaged new application and are asked whether you want an icon for it on the desktop, and where you want it to be integrated into the taskbar mechanism. Of course, some application vendors believe that their customers shouldn't have these choices, but that's another matter.
But once you get beyond a certain number of functions, and a certain level of complexity, then direct access to the underlying hierarchical file system has a lot to recommend it.
Just my 0.02 Euros
Re:/complexity/ ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
...and despite all this time, effort and money, most people still find computers complex to use.
My SO can pick up a remote control, figure it our without the manual, and operate the TV, VCR, and Hi-Fi. So can my parents. They are happy to set the message on their answering machine, program numbers into their phones, do combo-cooking with the microwave and generally use your average household technology without instruction ... but not a computer.
First you have to know about the idea of clicking with the mouse. The whole left-click / right-click thing which we take for granted and do 20000 times a day is NOT easy to catch onto for a new user. Once they have the idea, they still do know what to do.
"Start button? But its already started, why do I want to start it again?". How about the little icons on the taskbar? Any idea what they mean if you haven't been told? There's a deskpad with a notebook and pencil on it [looks like a writing application, but its the desktop]. Then a big blue "e" [here is South Africa we have a TV channel called "e" with a very similar logo]. Then a clock inside a square [that would be outlook].
When there IS a window open, there's three funny looking icons at the top right. Ask a new user if they can guess what they mean.
With the exception of international standard symbols (like the power symbol), most people can't guess the meaning of icons. Your average Word user goes on a 3 day course to learn the basics of clicking on the correct toolbar icon, when they could select a perfectly meaningful English word from the menu system.
The whole idea that GUIs are easy to use is a myth, as is the idea that icons are somehow more meaningful to users. These ideas have been forced down our throats by marketing droids and the odd technical writer who things (s)he knows his/her stuff.
Desktop means Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Directories may not make sense to some. That's why Apple and others called them folders, as in a manila folder. You take a document off your desktop and file it away in a folder. Simple.
Remember, the original Macs used floppy disks. You frequently had more than one inserted. They looked the same on screen as they did on your other desktop. You put stuff you didn't want anymore in the trash can. Very simple for office workers to learn.
Getting back to the article, of course the desktop took up the whole screen. What do you want around it, the floor?! Walls?
How does one get rid of the disk icon? I have two main internal hard drives (20GB and 30GB). How else do I tell them apart? What if I insert a zip or a CD? How do I tell them apart? Or an external FireWire or USB drive? This doesn't sound very well thought out! You *could* integrate permanent drives into one structure using mount points but how is that easier for the new comer? "Oh your second disk is mounted so that it is part of your first disk". "What?"
Having said all this, I don't have a desktop. I use MacOSX. The only thing below the windows is a desktop picture. My hard drives are in the computer window. So, in a sense, Apple has partly phased out the desktop metaphor. It still has folders, but you can choose not to display a desktop. The new representation is a Computer with icons representing all your storage devices (similar to My Computer in Windows). This is closer to what the new, computer literate generation, mine, interprets it to be.
In short, we don't need a metaphor anymore. You only need a metaphor when explaining to new people. Using the office as an analogy made sense when computers were new. How is an office analogy going to help a young child learn about computers?
I'd like to see us go to a database-like idea with the ability to attach arbitrary attributes to files and replace folders with categories. A file could belong to more than one category. Related categories could have links between them. Instead of a tree you'd get more of a web. Don't know if it'd be any simpler though. For the time being the current idea works.
Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Everything you ever needed to know you did not learn in kindergarten, but for some reason some people don't beleive that. Sometimes, as is the case with general purpose computers, the interface will require some training because there are new concepts.
An apt analogy is language. There are too many words in English. We should simplify it. Perhaps we only need 500 words.
Teach people about disks, don't take the icon away.
Re:New Xerox Palo Alto for 3D usage metaphors? (Score:3, Insightful)
Check Google. I'm sure you can find quite a few teams that are working on this.
So far, none of these teams' efforts have been successfull. I'd wager that is because the actual viewing area is 2D. Maybe if we start to use VR-glasses, 3D workspaces would be convenient, but since that isn't the case a 2D desktop is far less clunky than a (badly) projected 3D one.
my 2cts, anyway..
that's not exactly a surprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Fast forward to 2001 and you have an underlying OS with sophisticated name spaces, networking, hypertext, and access to gigabytes of data. Icons representing devices and a handful of files don't cut it anymore, if they ever did.
This is, of course, also why trying to adopt the Apple GUI to UNIX machines has failed so miserably in the past. It wasn't that the Apple GUI was so super-sophisticated that nobody could copy it. Rather, UNIX has always been too complex for the Apple GUI to represent well.
So, where does that leave us? Windows, Gnome, and KDE are slavishly trying to copy the original Apple paradigm, putting file icons and link icons everywhere, leading to a complex mess. Yes, this needs to go. Trouble is, while there are a bunch of better ideas, the one thing that users hate more than a bad UI is a UI that's different from what they are used to. So, all the good ideas that are out there (and have been out there for a couple of decades) have a really hard time in the market. It's not better ideas that's needed, what's needed is better ideas that are also palatable to existing users. And that, nobody has come up with yet.
In Defense (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I think I should have a go at arguing for this guys idea, as nobody else is!
On my computer, I use multiple desktops. I have one for work stuff - star office, kpresenter etc. I have another desktop for multimedia - xmms, mplayer, realplayer etc, a 3rd desktop for gaming, and a 4th (spare!) desktop. Yes, I am a bit wierd and anal (see yesterdays discussion about autism!). Furthermore, I usually organise my linux consoles in a similar way - tty1-2 for root access, the rest for userland stuff, another one for tailing logs and a vt100 open at the end (comes in usefull on occasion).
I find this logical division of "desktops" enables me to better organise myself. I dont see why MS Windows couldnt enable this for Harry Homeowner. Somewhere on the taskbar is a shortcut for desktops. It is trivial to change/add/remove desktops. When you install a game, it is "installed" to the game desktop. There is a shortcut on the desktop/start bar for that desktop. The working directory for that game is on the desktop. For many users, who just need Office, Explorer, winamp and a few games this might work.
However, I can think of a number of problems that would need to be overcome. What about generic applications, which you may need on a number of desktops? What about applications which dont fit into any desktop category? What happens when the desktop starts getting to cluttered? What happens if you want to open Word and that RPG on the same desktop (i.e. so you could copy and paste the final text into word, to prove you had completed the game to an equally sad friend)? I'm sure most of these problems are trivial to overcome, but you will surely encounter further difficulties.
Finally, I dont think you can ever get rid of the Hard Drive icon. Yeah, just hide it away, so Harry doesnt get confused by it. But it still needs to be there for power users.
Re:Yah right... (Score:5, Insightful)
The average computer user wants to do his job, which often has very little to do with the computer. That 10 minutes you refer to is better spent doing something else. You and I may find that ridiculous, but we're in the minority.
These studies are based on how average users (not your average Slashdot reader) use their computer systems. We can rail all we want to about "dumbing down" the interface, but in the end we don't really count. We'll learn the new way far more readily than the average folks will learn our way.
Re:Desktop uses (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, it works! And I'll bet that 99% of the
Yeah, I know it's somewhere in the Help files. However, if you don't know a function exists, you aren't going to find out about it from Help. Even if you know it _should_ exist, if you don't know what MS called it, you probably aren't going to find it. When MS writes a tutorial or "tips", it's worse than useless for anyone who already has some notion how to use the system -- their selection of which features and techniques to highlight is darned peculiar, and leads me to think that the authors aren't experienced enough in MS's own software to know what's actually useful... And there's no way to just start on page 1 and skim it all looking for the useful bits, even if I wanted to do that on screen.
No Desktop, No HD Icons = Mac OS X (Score:2, Insightful)
In the current release of Mac OS X, Apple has sort of stepped backwards by putting the HD icons back on the "Desktop," mostly in response to a terrible uproar from the Mac faithful who couldn't imagine using their Macs WITHOUT that metaphor - let's be honest, Apple's implementation made a lot more sense than anyone else's, simply because with the classic Mac OS, you didn't even necessarily need to stick to their folder structure for your machine to work. You could bury your system folder 30 levels deep and still boot your machine.
But also worth noting is the fact that in the current Mac OS X, the user is given the option of whether or not to use HD icons on the desktop, and NOTHING is placed on the "desktop" by default. Its essentially a blank canvas when you boot into it, and it lets the user decide whether or not to use the metaphor.
Personally, I choose NOT to display my internal HDs on the desktop, instead I place a link to my data storing partition on the desktop, essentially hiding the rest of my HDs, which contain mainly just my Systems and Apps, and I also have the option to have REMOVABLE media appear on the desktop. This is another area where the Mac OS shines - you don't have a floppy icon or Zip icon or Jaz icon or whatever until you actually insert a disk into the computer. Having them appear on the desktop is instant visual feedback that YES, there IS a removable disk in the drive and it offers quick access to it.
So if you want to see an implementation of this scenario in action, get a sweet deal on a used beige or B&W G3, max out the RAM, and toss a copy of X onto it.
You'll LOVE it.
Re:No!!! It's too much for me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that TV remotes have an increasing number of buttons, allowing one to do many functions well.
TVs that require a difficult-to-navigate menu for every function, instead of having buttons for them, piss people off.
The best TVs, of course, have buttons for many common functions, and menus for uncommon functions. Kind of like, say, a modern desktop, with a hard drive icon handy.
I disagree... (Score:2, Insightful)
OSX abandons this. I wouldn't mind that, but they need to do a better job of hiding it, at least in the GUI (and to be honest, it would be better in the CLI as well). I have my own thoughts as to how that might be doable, but I suppose that's for another post. It can certainly be done without breaking POSIX-correctness; it's really just a minor tweak to how the filesystem layout would be shown. But that's for another time, really; I'm trying to make mock-ups of how it could work, and I couldn't put those here anyway.
Ever teach somebody how to drive a stickshift? (Score:5, Insightful)
So people have to learn how to use computers in the same way they have to learn how to drive a car.
Have you ever thought about how intuitive an automobile is?
So you see, we can't demand an "intuitive" interface for everything. There are some things in life that people should just be expected to learn how to do, like operate cars and computers (regardless of the computer's OS). That also requires learning traffic laws, and similar "laws of the net."
If we had a Fisher-Price any-idiot-can-drive interface in cars, imagine how dangerous the roads would be! Even more so than they already are, considering that most idiots already know how to drive today, despite the "complex" interface in automobiles (even with automatic transmissions!) Yet they can't copy files around on their own computer.
Computer complexity vs Law complexity (Score:2, Insightful)
This is very common argument from experts in a given field. "This is our field, only authorized personel allowed, move along if don't want to play by our rules." I have always found it to be distasteful.
Techs or even information technology people of all variations aren't only ones guilty of this. Lawyers are infamous for this, like are doctors.
What would you think if a lawyer were to say something to effect that law doesn't have to be accessible to common man, but rather it should be as usable (=exact, readable) as possible to an expert. (Writing and reading law text is actually pretty similar practize to coding nowadays. Both have their conventions and rules that are purposeful, at least if accessibility is not considered a goal.)
I think many that have defended computer complexity would be ouraged by a law they can't understand.
(The next comment isn't about this particular blindspot, but rather a more general observation and flamebait based on my own work-experiences.) I sometimes wonder if the lack of respect that tech show towards normal users has an negative impacts on the finacial bottomline of their employers and if that would be enough reason to fire someone.
-- Flam, a tech if anyone was wondering
This author has lost his mind!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The hard disk icon was an error that should disappear from mainstream computer systems. Multiple desktops should be implemented across the board to simplify the life of casual users everywhere.
What? I don't think this person has ever done anything useful with a computer. I have so much I want to say to rip this apart but I just can't organize it all in my head. I'll just say a few quick things:
He's right about one thing: Most OS's don't implement the desktop idea correctly. What he's wrong about is his idea of a desktop. The whole concept, started by Mac OS, was that you have a desk, and the desk has drawers. You go into the folders within the drawers (directories within the hard drives) to get the files you want to use, and then you take them out and they are on your desktop. Macintosh still is the best at this. Their entire OS is extremely easy to grasp, even in OSX, only now it's much more powerful to the advanced user. Windows is just a cheap immitation. Linux is... well it's great, but it's desktop idea was meant for functionality and power, not casual use (at least in early distros.)
Now we come to the suggested desktop idea. This is ridiculous. Having multiple desktops that you toggle to, having no directory structure at all? Do you all realize how ridiculously point and click that would be? No longer could you go in a directory tree browsing program and efficiently move things, you would have to slect them with the mouse on one desktop, do the copy command, tab over to the desktop you want, then do the paste command. That's right, no more "cp" for you linux people, it's all point and click... That's just not going to fly. It's not powerful enough. The other thing is, think about this metaphorically. Multiple layered desktops... what in the hell can you compare that to? Having like 10 desks in a circle and you spin around to see which one you'll use? Stacking 10 desks on top of each other? I just don't see how that's easier.
Granted, I like the multiple desktops in Linux. I use them to have multiple full screen applications running at the same time. They have many other uses. On the other hand, I use the file tree browser, or the command line, to do all of my file management. It simply is the most convenient and powerful way, and if a user can't learn to browse a file tree... well... they need to pick up a new hobby/occupation.
what the? (Score:1, Insightful)
Not old fashioned, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a problems that we have. Remember that the AVERAGE programmer scores 2 std deviations ABOVE the norm for intelligence - we tend to be around a 150 - 160 on the IQ scale (average is 100)
We have no problems with this "stuff" because we ARE smarter than "they" are. What works for you and I doesn't work for the average user
Re:Hard drives should be more like RAM modules. (Score:1, Insightful)
Again with the 3D interface! (Score:3, Insightful)
What would be the advantage? Extra space? We have multiple desktops and three or four methods of window minimization and hiding. Easier navigation? Since when can't you map a tree into 2D perfectly adequately, and simply? We have a few ways of doing that, too. More intuitive interface? Sorry, but there's nothing intuitive about having to look around in multiple dimensions (mapped, incidentally, to two dimensions on your monitor) to find a window or icon or whatever you've misplaced.
As long as our data is primarily text-based and our displays are physically two-dimensional, 3D interfaces are going to both be pointless and suck. And you'd be hard put to convince me that a physical 3D interface would be practical for most applications.
Sorry, but the gee-whiz-neato-"imagine all the pretty polyhedrons" just doesn't translate into "good idea".
Re:/complexity/ ?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perfect.
You hit the nail right on the head. Why are computers so damned hard for a new user to use? Because a Windows PC works differently then a Macintosh PC which works differently than a Linux PC which works differently than... (ad naseum)
The GUIs of all those systems try to mimic the tools on an actual desk but each with enough subtle differences as to make the novice unable to move from one to another. And each new version changes everything COMPLETELY (although Apple had the same GUI from 1984 until 2000 with no "major" changes).
Calculators all look totally different. But anyone can look at one and know that it is a calculator. And when you know how to use one, you can use almost any other calculator. When it comes to icons on the GUI desktop, that isn't so easy. The icon for Microsoft Word is a green W. What is this W? Does this wash my comptuer for me? The Excel icon is an X. What is this X? Is this a computer xylophone?
GUIs and software publishers are very self-promoting. They use their own meaningless logos and marketing-drone generated names to identify their programs. And then they go nuts if you try an copy their "look and feel". That's all fine and dandy if you know how to use a computer and/or what you want to do with the computer. But for someone who never used a computer or that particular computer , they haven't got a clue.
All those fancy GUIs are supposed to make using computers easier. But they don't.
Here's how to design a computer that will truly be easy to use: Take someone who never has used a computer before. Sit them down in front of the computer. Don't tell them how to use the computer. Give them some tasks to do with the computer (ie, write a letter). If they can complete those tasks without needing help, you've designed an easy to use computer.
Re:That's right (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, nobody who actually develops software thinks like this. The problem is simply that people who develop software tend to be very comfortable with a lot of interface ideas, and therefore tend to pick whichever one works the best for a given piece of their application, without so much realizing that in the overall scheme of things they might be better off simplifying it a bit.
Believe me, we want to make it easy for the user. The easier the software is to use, the happier people will be with it, the better it will sell, the less you'll have to go back and rework interface elements.
Sometimes, if the target audience has a bit more experience or you're working on a technically specialized application, you tend to make things easier for your target users by using interface ideas that would make it harder for someone who just walked in off the street and decided to play with your software. That's generally as it should be... if I'm working on a handy little Unix utility, I generally shouldn't bother to slap a GUI around it and design a nice icon; what my users are going to want is a solid set of (long and short) commandline options, a useful configuration file, and the ability to pass in data on stdin.
At any rate, accusing your post's parent of elitism seems entirely uncalled-for... he's right: The concept of a big empty desktop behind your windows never confused anybody. The big expanding tree structure does suck hard when you apply it to a large directory structure. People who learn the keyboard shortcuts for their apps do generally have far better performance.
And someone else brought up an interesting point, which is that most people spend most of their time in a few applications... only so much time and effort should be spent trying to unify the interfaces of all applications, and it really shouldn't be done at the expense of optimizing for each application.
The flipside is that advanced users tend to recommend applications that have very powerful interfaces, which newer users tend to have trouble with because they're so highly optimized: vim, emacs, Excel, Photoshop, ksh... And they're right, if you learn to use those programs, you will discover that they're very powerful. If you can't be bothered to learn their interfaces, well, you'll just be relegated to using less powerful generically-interfaced software. This is not elitism, it's just a matter of optimization.
And they keep missing the target. (Score:3, Insightful)
Until we store files on the harddrives differently (non-hierarchical) there will always be a diference in the WYSIHWTDI 'what you see is where the data is' views.
A disk is equivilant to a tree. A tree has branches(path), and leaves (files). In a forest I can see all the leaves or just one branch, or a leaf. If I prune a tree that branch is gone. If I move a branch, I cut and graft (not paste) Vines are interlinks between fiels, and sometimes trees. Devices are fruits(mp3 devices) and or flowers/nuts.
Now when I see a 3D version of my forest then it will be good.
Trees was the original metaphor.
Now, where was that hedge trimmer?
Invalid assumptions (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry this is a completely invalid assertation. you cannot map the entire HD using multiple desktops. My current system has a 5 gig, a 10 gig, a 30 gig, a CD-RW, and a zip. I need a file manager. My home directory alone has almost half a gig of data and files on it.
There are some fallicies with the HD system. for instance if I mount a zip, a CD or a floppy it would be nice if they were mounted under my $HOME rather than /mnt or /. (I'm well aware that this can be done with softlinks etc...) Under Win XX the desktop doesn't correspond to a reasonable storage location: My Documents. But the START button was a good concept, but poor implementation. Apps need to be easily accessable with a menu. IMHO works much better than cluttering up my desktop space with icons. Under Win whenever an app. puts something on my desktop it get's deleted.
As far as improving usability, GUI systems really don't 'need' much more than they already have. (Specifice tasks may need work, networking, and security.) But highly skilled developers don't need to be worrying about the fact that Grandma, doesn't know that the icon with the letter is for email. That's what her 10 year old grandchildren are for.
Here again is another fallicy I have good reason to rarely run more than 4 VDs There is good reason why the heirarchal directory structure has remained and even become integrated into file structures.
It's easy to maintain and navigate. I fail to understand how navigating 8 levels down in a tree is more complex than navigating 8 VDs. With the 8 VDs you have prev, current and next. With the tree, you have parent, current, and maybe children.
Another invalid assertation, I have 37 directors in $HOME, not counting .directories How many desktops to would I have to navigate to find what I'm looking for? Perhaps I'm stupid, cynical is more like it, but I fail to understand how having potentially 37 VDs would help me with file management and storage. And incidentally I do not have a HD icon on my desktop, nor even a link to $HOME, that's on a menu under my right mouse button. Where it can be accessed anytime, but is out of the way.
While usability is still a concern I believe the author picked the subject more to get attention, that to actually foster innovation, and it appears to have worked.
We need the Beatles (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people do not understand file management or how their operating system works. They identify only with the applications they use. That is why when you ask someone what OS they run they will tell you "Office 2000" or somesuch. The applications are the OS to these people.
In that respect, a streamlined OS for the average user should be transparent. The user should spend little time thinking about where files are stored or what folders are where. Get them into their applications and make locating files easy. The less time spent moving files around or making your icons line up pretty, the better.
We need the Beatles. They could not read sheet music and did not know they were breaking all the rules for song writing. They wrote new rules that worked. We need a new OS written by someone whose ideas are not hindered by the assumptions that have brought us to where we are today.
Organize This! (Score:2, Insightful)
The solution is simple (Score:3, Insightful)
This is how it should be: there is a panel at one of the sides of the screen, the rest is a "workspace" where programs visually reside.
The panel/dock should provide some kind of visual clue that things can be added and removed from it. It will now be seen like an advanced kind of menu, rather then an extension of the filesystem.
There really is NO reason to confuse users with having launchers for programs in the same physical area as where programs run; It should be like a windshield in a car, keeping the programs away from the driver.. The controls (and launchers) should all be on the inside of the windshield.
Computere are a lot more like cars then you think.
Baffling article... (Score:3, Insightful)
He says that the directory system is confusing because it is limitless, and suggests some vaguely defined notion of unlimited space. So he advocates using "desktops", which have fixed "physical" limits. But then to get around the obvious problems with having such limits, he suggests using many virtual desktops accessed by some sort of menu or taskbar. Um...hello? The only difference between a hierarchial directory structure (a collection of folders inside one single "root" directory, each of which can contain files or more folders) and a system of multiple virtual desktops (a collection of "desktop" areas inside a single logical collection, each of which can contain files or folders) is that the desktops have artificial and arbitraty limits on how much stuff they can hold. How exactly does limiting the number of items you can place in a unit make it less confusing to use? Is it worse to have to search through 100 files in one directory to find what you're looking for than to navigate through ten different desktops with ten files each? And if it is, why can the user not simply create ten NEW directories, if that is how they wish to organize their stuff?
Basically, the desktop system Loebel is proposing is a hierarchial directory structure where the directories don't have scroll bars. Where is the logic in that?
As for making computers easier to use...that's a very hard task. As a rule, the more a particular tool can accomplish, the more complex it is to use. A computer is a tool that has virtually limitless applications, and as a result, it is a complicated tool to use. The problem is, end users want computers to be as simple as a toaster to operate, but they also want all of the functionality of a full-fledged computer system. Sorry, folks, but such a thing simply isn't possible. You can have ease of use or you can have a broad range of functionality...but you can't have both. That's not to say that it's not possible to make current systems *easier* to use while preserving functionality, but a computer will never be a toaster, nor should it be.
A hierarchial file system is not that hard to learn to use. Yes, it does require some time and effort to learn, but it is far from impossible. A complete novice can't turn their computer on for the first time and instantly know how the Windows file system works, but it is certainly possible to learn. Anyone who wants to use a computer should devote some time to learning the basics. It's no different than driving a car or using any other complicated device. You don't sit behind the wheel of a car and instantly know all of the traffic laws, or all of the functions of your vehicle. You had to study them first, and learn about them. The same goes for using a computer. And you don't have to know how compile your own kernel or write shell scripts to use a computer to write e-mail, any more than you need to know the inner workings of your car's engine to drive it. These more complicated things can be learned later, if you have the interest and the time, but there are still some basics that you should know when you start using a computer.
DennyK
Another one of these pseudo-academic jerk-offs.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What the hell does that mean? That there's some point where you just can't click the mouse just *one* more time?
"Spiraling file systems..."
God, I hope I'm not around to watch this guy freak out the first time he comes across a self-referential symbolic link..
And we continue:
But wait a minute! Just a moment ago we were spiraling downward into a maelstrom of "endless depth" from which no mouse could escape, let alone get us into in the first place...
Which is it?
What has this guy been smoking?
A hard drive is "vague"?
Funny. I've always found cd /var/log/snort, for example, to be pretty goddam specific.
But maybe I'm missing something...
Ah! here's a hint:
One of them Mac-using graphic "artists"
heh..
t_t_b