Re: New ProjectCenter Icons

[Graham J Lee]

On 13 Sep 2007, at 13:59, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:

> > What I still do not understand is why almost all arguments against  
> > my proposal finally end up like (well I am making it quite  
> > black&white):
> >
> > "It is already good how it is solved (because it comes from  
> > NextStep). Well, Xcode/IP have now something that is missing in  
> > GNUstep/PC/GORM. So we just have to add the missing things, i.e.  
> > some DO between PC and GORM and FileMerge to interact between both  
> > and everything is fine."
>
> I guess that's because most people think that separate apps  
> integrated via DO and distributed notifications will provide a  
> better user experience than a monolithic application that does  
> everything.  My favorite example of the app that does everything is  
> microsoft word ... which I find utterly unusable.  You either live  
> with a huge amount of clutter in toolbars and menus, or you  
> customise it to the point where it's completely non-standard, and  
> you can't effectively use anyone elses customised version.

The clutter does make pointyhairware apps unusable - I recently spent  
10 minutes searching for the Change Password option in a groupware  
client among a suffusion of toolbars (it eventually turned up about  
five clicks from the main screen).  Conversely I've seen statements  
on my local MUG along the lines of "<Foo.app> sucks because you can't  
do <bar>", where actually bar _is_ available through the Services  
menu.  What people really want seems to be:
http://iamleeg.blogspot.com/2006/10/best-app-evar.html
but without the cluttered UI ;-).

Seriously, I think the reason that Services goes un[der]used on the  
Mac is that the documentation is in the wrong place - "my app  
provides a word count service which can be used in your app" makes a  
less strong mental association than "my app has a word count  
feature".  Thus while people may desire lots of little apps that do  
lots of little things, ultimately they're harder to work with because  
the flow is non-obvious.

Cheers,
Graham.