Cron/Xwindows

[Brian D]

--- A Duston wrote:
> Brian Kelsay wrote:
> > I just read JWZ's rant and I understand his
> frustration and admire
> > him for his willingness to just say what he
> thinks. 
...
> The main thing I think he is
> talking about is
> making programs that run in a GUI environment, and
> making them look
> like what they are supposed to be pretending to be. 
> I'm talking about
> CD-players that look like CD-players in the physical
> world.  The main
> problem here is that I as the user of this software
> can't even begin
> to tell the controls of the application apart from
> the decorations,
> and end up having to click the mouse on EVERY damn
> thing in sight
> just to see it if does anything useful or indeed
> anything at all! 
>
...> not one that looks
> like some object in the real world.
> 
I don't know I kind of like music players that look
like music players. What I do have a problem with is
many skins are designed for aliens from Alpha Centauri
to use and not humans. Although a futuristic media
player may look really cool, it is useless as a player
if you have to relearn wht is the play button and what
is tha fast forward button every time you use it. I
remember some very nicely made GUI media appliances
for Windows.
An equalizer looked and acted like an equalizer, etc.
The problem with mplayer and many other ones is they
could use better usability. Simply adding little popup
comments that identify a button/decoration/whatever
would improve usability enormously. Also it would be
nice to have real menus too. ;)
KSCD is an example of a good usable interface, just
too bad that it doesn't have a menu.

Brian

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