3 Aug
2006
3 Aug
'06
12:02 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
Yes. No doubt a good point -- yet everyone can come up with
their own wish lists. Figuring out where to draw the line
gets tough. And, if you don't draw *any* line, then you
make more work for yourself with very little "commercial"
gain.
I like the original UN*X mantra -- build tools out of smaller
tools. It gives you lots of places to insert "controls"...
without *requiring* their presence.
These monolithic things are either too stupid (by trying to be
too *smart*!) or too bulky/unwieldy.
OTOH, giving a
user TOO MUCH control over the interface can be
just as bad. You end up adding code to support all these choices
and build tools to give the user access to those choices (even if
it's just a list of checkboxes, etc.) and that code has to be
maintained, tested, etc.
And, you get comments from users *trying* to use it yet finding
that it isn't *completely* flexible ("why can't I specify italic
text to be displayed in white?").
It's a tough job trying to figure out what flexibility to allow
the user and what things to cast in concrete. Especially when you
are dealing with such a broad spectrum of users!
In my case I want to turn "expose" and "widgets" off on Mac OS X, as
well as
the special effects. That's the bulk of the control I'm looking for. While
you can disable expose (no hot keys), it is probably still wasting
resources. The "widgets" problem is much larger, as far as I know there is
no way to turn it off, it is a major waste of resources. It was one of the
reasons I dumped 10.4 and went back to 10.3.9. At least the special effects
can be turned off.