May 2004 Archives
Citation from one of the SPAM-mails received today.
Microsoft Office XP Professional
$120
Retail price: $30
Our Price: $120
You Save: $180BUY NOW
Umpf, must resist force to buy....
A blog on the Microsoft Office suite (via Scobleizer)
Sarah Allen follows up on the metaphor of gardening & software development introduced by Ned Batchelder.
As I said in a previous post, weeding is extremly important. But I wouldn't consider weeding a second-class activity. Actually, it's a first-class activity. If you don't remove the weeds, you'll end up with software rot - the plants you (and your customers) expect to grow and flourish won't bring out the enjoyable fruit. And the longer you wait, the harder it'll be to get rid of the weeds. They spread fast.
Plus, weeding is enjoyable. You know that you've made a substantial contribution to your code and you'll reap the benefits tomorrow. Even on a rainy day when you just can't wrap your mind around the hard problem you're expected to tackle.
Uhm, looks like I get carried away with the metaphor now :-)
Removing weeds isn't rocket science. But more often than not, rocket science isn't required to improve your code.
SauceReader. free for personal use. Including posting functionality.
In the context of the MT 3.0 debacle, John Gruber talks about "Features Sell Upgrades" and "Pre-Announcements Are Almost Always Regretted" - Looks like a lesson every company (including us - and we're still learning it) has to learn the hard way.
Here's a lesson on UI complexity to be learned. While reading Rick's blog, I came across a link to the early 1984 Apple Macintosh introduction.
Check out this screenshot of MacPaint. It's interesting to see that MacPaint was featuring 6 menus. Six. Two of them are File and Edit. Now take a look at the remaining four menus. Three of them are concerned with Text properties: Font, FontSize and Style. This leaves one menu called Aids for additional functionality. Take a look at the palettes. That's it. Nothing more. Null. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Users have been able to grasp the concept of MacPaint easily. And created pretty elaborate drawings with it. Now compare this UI with you favorite drawing application today. Do you see the difference? Do you see why the vast majority of users have trouble using today's applications? And even if they're able to accomplish a task, they most likely fail to take advantage of the applications feature set?
Better yet, check out this screenshot of the early Finder. Now open up a window on your Windows XP or MacOS X desktop. Do you see the difference? Talk about screen clutter. Talk about the user not seeing the forest for the trees.
BTW, if you're into Microsoft Word (for Mac), make sure to read Rick's blog. Great stuff.
Ned Batchelder pulls weeds.
Although I'm fundamentally opposed to gardening in general, I second Ned's philosophy concerning clearing up the little things in your code. If you don't do it, start now.
...regarding Apple's Retail Stores. Excellent.
The Rise of Interface Elegance in Open Source Software
One of the most important acts of a software project manager is to say ?no?. No, this patch introduces more code than it should. No, this feature will confuse more people than it will help. No, you?re ugly and stupid (sometimes the manager has a bad day).(plus, simplifying the UI release after release sounds like an intriguing idea)
UI development is the hard part. And it?s not the last step, it?s the first step. In my estimation, the difference between:(I'm not sure I like the phrase it's not the last step, it's the first step - having an excellent backend providing rich functionality is a requirement for a great app - as is a great UI - and separating both is also considered a good idea by many software architects including yours truly)isn?t just a little bit of extra work. It?s not even twice the work. It?s an entire order of magnitude more work. Developing software with a good UI requires both aptitude and a lot of hard work.
- software that performs function X; and
- software that performs function X, with an intuitive well-designed user interface
Ask Tog about Fitt's Law.
Still an interesting read.
Brian Duff has some interesting observations (in the context of talking about iTunes' UI) regarding the tree-controls widgets widely used in the Windows UI (and to some extent on MacOS) - via Scobleizer.
Following up on a previous post, here's the method for replacing Notepad.exe.
