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Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.plus.com wrote:
On Fri, 2005-11-25 at 19:53 +0000, Brett Parker wrote:
I like my GUI without an evil desktop - lots of frames, lots of terminals, lots of tabs. Hmmm. tasty.
http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/Hmmmm tiled window manager, wasn't Windows 1.0 like that...are you saying that Billy G had it right on the first shot ?
Seriously though I can see how that would work out pretty well for some tasks like system administration or perhaps development..but I can't see it being a great environment for a non technical user performing general tasks, how are they supposed to know how to launch anything ?
Weirdly enough, the first time it starts up, it presents it's man page for you - give the user the basic info on startup, let them figure out the rest - oh, and tell them *how* to get the info quickly (Alt-F1, worryingly enough). For very little effort on the part of the user it can't be learnt.
For system administration and development, it's exactly what you need, though :)
As for windows 1.0... erm... nah - appears to have too much in the way of sitractions... Infact, here's a page full of screenshots of windows...
http://www.infosatellite.com/news/2001/10/a251001windowshistory_screenshots....
Yes - and if you've ever worked in Tech Support, you tend to wish it had never bloody happened!
Actually I worked for many years in Tech support (at everything from first-line "No that's not a coffee holder" to supporting other IT professionals) and I have never thought that someone shouldn't be allowed access to a computer (excluding a few of the IT professionals)
Of course there are stubborn, incompetent, impatient, frustrated and simply confused users. Sometimes you encounter a user who is a combination of all five. Sometimes they make life very hard for those trying to support them. But I have never ever thought that the solution would be to raise the entry level high enough that the technically less able never get involved.
Just have a good swear about them once you have closed the call, works for me every time :-)
Or make it so that they actually get someone in, alter the dynamics, make it so that starting applications is easy but leave the hardware to someone else - don't make them administrators by default, don't make software a point and click operation from the web, and never let Java developers near HTML (OK - that's a side issue, but it fell in to my brain :)
Trying to talk people through the completely broken TCP/IP stack in windows, when it falls over and a reboot doesn't fix it is just plain not fun - then, letting them use substandard operating systems is probably the biggest problem.
Cheers, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk