I've always been ambivalent about Steve Jobs, a hippie bully billionaire. What I've never disagreed with him about is that most programmers come up with user interfaces that suck.
Tonight I was trying to complete my computer TMA [it isn't due for over a month but I want to get it out of the way so that I can concentrate on maths]. So I've been busy with DIA diagrams, for these are what takes the time. I thought. It was when I tried to insert these into my Open Office document that I had a problem.
Some of the diagrams needed to be landscape rather than portrait. Nae probs, this is something that must have come up before, so I hit F1 [help] and when help appeared there was indeed a solution.
So I minimized help, so that I could see it and the document that I was working on at the same time and clicked the document. Help disappeared. What!? Help was a different programme and not always-on-top. If I say that this is sub-optimal behaviour I'd be lying; it is far worse, a fucking travesty of the ways that things should work.
Two seconds of user-testing the help system should have discovered that it had this fault, flaw, sheer piece of monstrous cretinous stupidity...
Jobs would have gone spare, and rightly so. Do easy stuff, do it well and make it intuitive. And, please...please test it on people.
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Neil, why can't all programmers stick to that philosophy - do easy stuff, do it well and make it intuitive - it should be tattoed on their foreheads as they graduate from geek-school.
I am trying to manage a database (recently updated from basic-MS Access to all-singing web-based) where, when you change drop-down-box options it either:
a) changes historical data;
b) changes ongoing data but leaves historical data as is; or
c) changes ongoing data but hides historical data,
depending on which way the wind is blowing. Nightmare. They are testing it on people, but they're charging us a maintenance fee!
Anyway, good luck with your TMA.
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