[mythtv-users] Why Free Software has poor usability ?

Jay R. Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Wed Aug 6 15:29:17 UTC 2008


On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 10:50:33AM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> Or, if someone else does something to improve things, please stop 
> b****ing if your "Recording brightness for shows from channels whose 
> name ends with '-dark'" option gets removed from Myth.  Instead, figure 
> out how it's /supposed/ to work and do things right.  (Yeah, that's a 
> made-up option so I don't bruise anyone's fragile ego by calling out any 
> (more) of the real useless settings.)  Usability doesn't mean you never 
> have to learn and adapt to changes--take a look at MS Office 2007 if you 
> don't believe me...  :)

To be fair: the problem on that sort of thing isn't the options
themselves... it stems from failures on two other point:

Progressive Complexity (hiding knobs until users need them)

and

Getting the Defaults Right (if you pick the right default setting, most
users don't need to know the knob's there).

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com                     '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274

	     Those who cast the vote decide nothing.
	     Those who count the vote decide everything.
	       -- (Josef Stalin)


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