[TYPO3-hci] new skin

[Peter Kindström]

Hi
> Yes, I have seen it. Even seen it in action in one of Kasper'S podcasts.
> It's cool, it's fancy, it's - well - let's call it colorful, but I don't
> think that it will improve overall usability.
> It seems that many people are mistaking a modern look and fancy JS dropdowns
> for improved usability but in fact it's just the contrary.

Many people "think" here, why not make a small usability test 
with the different skins?

It would be fun to do, mostly because _my believe_ is that the 
look is much more important than some people might think...

A clear, well designed icon or a well thought out text can make 
a huge differens. For example using the phrase "Page properties" 
instead of "Page Header"...


> Some of you might be old enough to remember the good old times where we had
> things like Word Perfect for DOS.
> I guess most of you would not say that WP had got a modern look, but it's
> still one of the best interfaces I have ever worked with, even though it had
> no GUI at all.
> No clicking, no dragging and dropping, just a set of Keyboard Shortcuts that
> were easy to learn even for the non experienced secretary.

Did you ever talk to any secretary? I did and she did not like 
it at all - she could never learn the damn codes/shortcuts and 
was very glad when they disappeard (in WP6.0 i guess?).

(My little theory is that technicians, programmers and people 
like that prefer that type of interface (I like to have that 
control of things), but most of the other people out there 
don´t. I think that's the simple reason why Windows is so 
popular - it hides all the "technical stuff".)


> If you want to create a really intuitive GUI maybe you should take a step
> back and try to have a look from another point of view.
> Maybe it could be a good idea to look at such a GUI like a gamedesigner
> would do.
> Imagine you have to create something that will help the player to survive in
> a very complex ego shooter game.
> You have to be fast so you don't have the time to move your mouse to the top
> of the screen each time you want to use another function if you don't want
> those aliens shoot your head down.
> All the important stuff should be available just by pressing the appropriate
> key.

Key presses are not the issue - few and logical keys are! The 
same goes for icons - too many icons is not good either. But if 
you have the same amount of keys and icons, most people prefer 
to use icons (not in fast shooting games of course, but in most 
other programs).

I always get surprised when I realise that most people I help 
using Word don´t even know that Ctrl+S saves a document... They 
push the Save-icon!


> During my time as an instructor for media designers we did something special
> to have those "mouseclickers" use shortcuts.
> We removed the mouse completely and left them alone with a keyboard and a
> screen.
> After some days without the mouse we reinstalled it and guess what: They
> still used the shortcuts wherever they could.
> The gain of time was enormous and today they don't want to miss them
> anymore.

What you show here has nothing to do with usability, it only 
shows that pressing keys is a faster way to work than using 
mouse clicks. No one doubts that.
But what happens if you have tens or hundreds of key shortcuts. 
Wouldn´t it be better to use icons/menues then?


> So please kick these DHTML menus and introduce something that will really
> improve usability: Shortcuts

We could/should have both!
Nice icons and well structured menues are not contradictions, 
instead they complete each other!


-- 

Peter Kindström