I was just reading the Ars interview with Larry Yaeger and one comment struck me as totally on the mark. He's discussing the Newton and the complete failure of its original handwriting recognition software (created by ParaGraph) which ultimately doomed the Newton project.
The Newton project was now under Larry Tesler, and he led this meeting. I got a chance to use their handwriting recognition. It got 1 out of 10 things I wrote correct. It was terrible. The experience was the same for pretty much everyone. Yet Tesler beamed. I never understood it. Later I learned he'd simply become fascinated by the technology, and its potential, and I guess that blinded him to the realities of the technology at the time.
"he'd simply become fascinated by the technology, and its potential, and I guess that blinded him to the realities of the technology at the time."
I am often guilty of this and I have to reel myself back in at least two or three times a week. Working in such a fascinating industry with some of the brightest people on the planet, it's hard not to get all jazzed up by every new invention. What I think many in this industry have a difficult time with is stepping back and acknowledging the realities of the technologies we're building -- that the overwhelming majority of it is ridiculously complicated and utterly incomprehensible to Regular People.
An example that some of you may be able to relate to is Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a killer extension to Firefox that lets you augment pages using user JavaScript files. You can write these JS files yourself or grab them from the growing repositories. I love this extension. I love the idea of giving users more control over the content that's displayed in their browsers on their computers. It's brilliant. Can I imagine myself trying to explain this to my mom? Absolutely not.
We're seeing all kinds of amazing technologies coming into our mainstream -- from basics like RSS feed aggregators (and even cooler things like RSS enclosures and podcasting,) to social bookmarking, tagging, social networks, Skype, etc. As producers of innovative technologies, it's critically important that we not get blinded to the usability realities of these new tools and technologies. If we fail to recognize that almost none of what's emerged in the last year is even close to "just working" for Regular People, I think these technologies will remain in our mainstream and never make it into the mainstream.
Posted by asa at June 15, 2005 09:05 AMHere, here. Keep your eyes on the prize since the power of Firefox et al is its utter usability for the masses and fun flexibility for us geeks.
Also, here's a sample of some Newton poetry I wrote with said stunningly awful handwriting recognition.
Cheers! ~ Kevin
Posted by: KevinFreitas on June 15, 2005 08:35 PMI sure hope that the move to Cairo isn't an example of this problem.
Posted by: Axord on June 15, 2005 08:43 PMAxord, I don't know anyone "fascinated" by cairo. From what I can tell, it's going to require a massive amount of work and the people who understand this have evaluated all of the available options and determined that cairo was worth that amount of work.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on June 15, 2005 08:47 PMThat's why I don't use greasemonkey. If I find a gm user script that I like, I use the greasemonkey compiler and compile it to its own extension. For instance, I hate intellitxt, and I use the intellitxt disabler user script. Greasemonkey adds another level of configurability (you have to modify the extension to extend firefox) that only power users enjoy. I often think about adding these user-scripts-as-extensions to umo, but never do.
Posted by: Simplex on June 15, 2005 10:24 PMexcellently written. i think what i also meant to say a few posts back re: "tooting your own horn" is that there are some core underlying usability/user-interface principles that transcend firefox that you should also be promoting (as you have done here).
Posted by: justin on June 15, 2005 10:26 PMA little off topic - what of the Newton2? This was a rumor circulated by Alpha that a new Newton might be coming. As you know, many of us use the Newton, and many are still developing apps for the Newton. (I still have one) I still hear rumors of a Newton-iPod morphing...and a few sites report rumors from Pixo. Any thoughts?
Posted by: Thom Hanford on June 15, 2005 10:49 PMHow right you are. What would inventing new things bring to you, if no one can use it. What about building and inventing a plane, but no one could fly it?
But things this time are a little different I think!
Take Greasemonkey for example! Im not into Java. I cant write those Scripts my own. But I use it and love it!!! How? Take Platypus! and everyone can make it! Its that good reason for Open source things! There was this one guy, making greasemonkey. Wow, what powerful extension he made. Not many can use it, but its powerful! Then there is the other guy, knowing this Problem! So he writes a other extension to give it an easy use!!
But you can go back wayyyy deeper. Take Firefox itself! Firefox is the thing which is the most "power killing app"! If you understand it, you can use it, how ever you want! Make youre own skins, your own extensions! Rebuild it if you want.
The point is, that guys like me, the users, just cant do that! But there will always be guys, who can, with the interest in building new things as easy as possible and directly for the user (example is johnhaller.comīs PortableFirefox for using on removable media)!
The reason Greasemonkey and other page-hacking scripts are never going to be mass-market, even if you make them safe and easy to install, is side-effects. If lots of people start installing page-hacking extensions, they are bound to start mangling pages - either because they aren't carefully coded, or because the target page changes under them, or both. And when they do, who's going to get the blame? The site owner. And he'll start trying to disable the script, or even ban Firefox altogether, because he's fed up of people calling him saying "your site is broken".
Posted by: Gerv on June 16, 2005 12:01 AMWhen I started using Firefox (0.7 I think), I had to switch quite often to IE because many websites were broken. But I loved the idea of FF (and some features :)
I didn't convert my family until 0.9 (or some RC/PR) and my grandfather started with 1.0 - because they want it to work. If it doesn't work all the time and with any website, they don't want it. Funny thing: FF didn't change that much, but the web did and most sites got FF-compatible :)
I'm quite often fascinated from a technology (currently SVG) and I try to get friends to use it, too. It is part of the evaluation process - if they use it, too - it passes the test. If they don't, I have to aks myself if it's really a useful and working technology or just a nice idea.
Posted by: Tobias on June 16, 2005 12:06 AMYou can't fool me! I know this post is anti-Opera. Just because Opera has 4,639 configuration options doesn't mean that its developers were blinded to the realities of the technology. And there you go talking about Regular People again like they're someone we should care about. When will you stop all the Opera bashing?
JK
Posted by: CFlakes on June 16, 2005 04:47 AMCFlakes: U have problems! This post isn't "ANTI-OPERA"!!! As I stated before, this is a Firefox blog not some Opera blog. We talk about Firefox here, not Opera. I hate Opera though!
Posted by: Alex on June 16, 2005 07:36 AMJK? What could *that* possibly mean?
Posted by: Dustin on June 16, 2005 08:01 AMJK - thanks, you cracked me up. :))) A breath of fresh air, although it's scary to think that many people are writing things not unlike that 100% seriously.
Posted by: ancestor on June 16, 2005 08:47 AM"And there you go talking about Regular People again like they're someone we should care about."
This has to be flame-baiting, but I won't take it that way.
Instead I would confess that I am one of those "Regular People", and I am glad that the Firefox developers seem to care about me.
However, I would like to share some problems with Deer Park, in an effort to explain why it is most important to shoot for the regular user as the target user;
Under WinXP, I have downloaded, clean-installed and then attempted to run two versions of DP, and still can't get it right. The general problem is that selecting "Options" results in seeing the page I was at, with the tabs for the Options windows at the top of the screen, and an OK and Cancel button at the bottom of the screen. Other than that... no Options dialog box, no way to select any options.
So I de-install Deer Park and revert to 1.0.4 (I've learned to keep backups to make this process easier), and in the meantime hope v 1.1 "just works."
What's my point? I am fearful that when DP is released as FF 1.1, it's going to break what I have in v1.0.4. So I wait with crossed fingers and keep Firefox 1.0.2 running on the Linux side.
ASIDE: yes, I have tried mightily to upgrade to 1.0.4 on the Linux side but because I am one of the "Regular People" I can't seem to "just double click the installer and have it install." I recognize that this is something to do with my lack of knowledge of Mandrake Linux and is not FireFox's fault and I am not bashing Linux... but ... shouldn't this "just work" for a "regular Person" like me?
Anyway, what I am getting at is *thank you for remembering us end-users.* Many of us are not total dummies, we do try to learn and improve (I'm delighted that I was able to figure out how to share Windows partitions while on the Linux side! This only took me a year! *laughs*) but we need developers continuing to look out for us as they create this excellent software.
Sincerely,
Lawrence
Ithaca, NY
Joke. JK stands for joke; it's a netspeak abbreviation. I thought that was obvious, but I guess it's just me.
Posted by: Dustin on June 16, 2005 10:57 AMAhh ... 'twas a joke... silly me :) Just a novice here.
I would add that I have never felt less than welcome posting here, so thank you for that.
While I am at it, and I don't know if this has been addressed in 1.0.4 on the Linux side but has anyone noticed that on the Windows side, using 1.0.4, "Options" is under the tools menu while under 1.0.2 on the Linux side "Options" is not to be found under the "Tools" meno but instead we have "Preferences" (which does the same thing) under the Edit menu?
Should they not be named the same and in the same location no matter the platform ?
Further, under "Preferences/Advanced" there is an option to "Periodically check for updates to: My extentions and themes" but not for FireFox itself (which choice is available under "Options/Advanced" area on the WinXP side ?
I promise to work harder at learning the trick of installing (and locating) new software under Linux.
Finally, I used to beta test for Apple. Sent them so many bugs for the MessagePad that they gave be an MP 2 for my efforts. I confess to long ago having migrated to PALM technology, but only after Apple gave up on the Newton.
Thanks again to the FireFox developers for all their hard work and for keeping an eye out for us "Regular People".
Sincerely,
Lawrence
Ithaca, NY
Should they not be named the same and in the same location no matter the platform?
The problem is, each platform has different guidelines as to where configuration is accessed and what it's called. On Windows it's "Options" under Tools, on Gnome it's "Preferences" under Edit, and on Mac OS X it's "Preferences" under the application menu.
For a platform-specific app, you just go with your platform's guidelines. For a cross-platform app, you have two choices: you can pick one and stick with it, or you can make each local version conform to that platform's guidelines. Neither is perfect, but "Regular Users" are more likely to have one computer or all the same platform than to have one of each. So the best -- or the least bad -- choice is to go with the platform's guidelines, so that user new to Firefox can find the config panel without hunting for them regardless of whether it's on Windows, Mac, or Linux.
(Unfortunately, even though I think Firefox made the right choice, it drives me crazy, since I'm constantly switching between Windows, Mac and Linux!)
Posted by: Kelson on June 16, 2005 11:56 AMI noticed something interesting while looking at my web site statistics. This month, MSN has been dominated Google as the source of my site visitors. At the same time, Internet Explorer's share of my visitors has been increasing over Firefox. Now I know that the worldwide trend is that of an increased share by Firefox, and I also know that I should take all statistics with a grain of salt, and more so those of my little personal web site. But I think the correlation holds true anyway, and I believe the reason for it is quite simple. Most internet users are not particularly tech. savvy, mostly because they are just enough afraid of the technology to really explore and pursue their curiosity. The result is that default settings are left alone. IE users leave their default page as MSN, and Firefox users leave their default page as Google. So all these people coming from the MSN search page are IE users, while more people coming from Google are Firefox users.
To sum up, if the feature or new whiz-bang technology isn't user friendly, or particularly useful and functional by default, normal users won't get any use out of it.
Posted by: Jason on June 16, 2005 12:52 PMVisit BlogShares and support a Firefox text ad -Click here to give me 5 chips to keep the ad running. Please click once a day! With your help I can have the Firefox ad there for weeks!
Posted by: Alex on June 16, 2005 01:03 PMThanks for the response Asa. I suppose I'm just getting skittish reading about the current performance problems.
Posted by: Axord on June 16, 2005 02:56 PMAcutally, I believe "JK" stands for "just kidding." Although, "joke" doesn't change the meaning significantly.
Posted by: Greg on June 16, 2005 04:08 PMLawrence, what you've got is either a theme that's not compatible with the trunk (i.e. it doesn't skin the new options dialog and therefore breaks it) or a corrupted profile. A clean profile or switching back to the default theme should do the trick.
Posted by: Rishi on June 16, 2005 04:59 PMwho is Ars?
you can't just refer to something by one word, unless they are famous and obvious, like madonna or oprah or cher or ebay
next time say "an arstechnica.com interview with Larry Yaeger"
Posted by: wild bill on June 20, 2005 03:59 PMThanks Rishi, for your thought on the theme. I will switch it soon, and see if that works.
Additionally... I have been giving Asa's comments at the beginning of this thread a great deal of thought, RE: The usability factor.
I recently made a post to the support forum of the Linux distro I use, but I have tried a lot if different distros, and I think the comments make sense for all of them (at least my experience with all of them). With your permission, I am posting it here, referencing this thread, and substituting "(company)" for the particular distro. This is NOT a slam at Linux! If it is off-topic, please excuse me (and Asa should feel free to trash it). My point is usability should be King... and it isn't.
*****
I have been looking for a tool to reach out to the (company's) team for years. I did a Google, stumbled across this site/forum, and hope these thoughts get to someone in (company) who can make a difference: Hope is a good thing.
This is not a slam at (company).... I have used (company) distros, even some betas, over the years on a dual boot system (WinXP/(company) using LILO).
Nor is it a call for help. Essentially I have given up doing more than what the system will allow me to do. I should be able to figure my issues (essentially configuring and installing software) out but I suppose I will have to wait until someone makes a *truly* user friendly product.
I've been interested in Linux because it and the software I need that runs on it are "free", are apparently more resilient to bugs and virus', and frankly because I hate Micro$oft's attempt to totally control my computing life. I want OFF of the MS juggernaut.
My initial foray into Linux began when I discovered Open Office for Windows, and saw it was cross platform, could read and write MS Office files ... and then 'here's this free operating system called LINUX...'
Of late in the world of programmer's BLOGs I have seen comments that software is just too hard for the average user to use, that they tend to get wrapped up in the coolness of the technology, that the "Regular User" gets ... well, forgotten ... and they are correct. For an example please see Asa Dotzler's BLOG (and follow up comments at http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/008335.html).
Nowhere is this more true than in the world of Linux ... *any* Linux distro I have tried.
I used to be a tech support person, first on the Mac, then on Win 95, 98, 2000 and finally on XP. I am in my late 50's. I consider myself reasonably well versed in technology. I am not a support person any more... it's all I can do to give my son a clue on where to look to assist him when his network goes down.
But I am a "point and click" User. I totally respect anyone who is good with a LINUX terminal, knows all the Linux commands, can write in code, etc etc... that's just not me.
I should be able to use what is supposed to be an OS targeted for "Regular People" *JUST LIKE* a Regular Person.
But over the years Linux has done one thing after another that has had me stumped. Just a few examples;
- Managing the OS
a) Initially I could not get sound to work on the Linux side while it worked just fine on the WinXP side (so it wasn't a hardware issue). This seems to be solved with (company's latest distro) (the free version) but *I* certainly didn't do anything to make sound happen... and why it would not work in past versions is beyond me... and most frustrating. Why were none of my attempts successful? Because it is really not (yet) a User-Friendly OS.
b) After several years I figured out how to share my windows partitions (don't ask, I don't remember what magical steps I took to get me there)... but I still can not SAVE files into a windows partition from LINUX. If I have any hope of moving OFF of the WinXP OS, I have to be able to make use of those partitions, the space on my hard drive, and the files that space contains.
(The reverse is true: From the WinXP side, I can not see the Linux partitions. Now I have to transfer files via G-mail, which is a kludge method. )
- Why is it so monstrously difficult to install software into Linux?
a) I have finally figured out that and RPM file is something one can double-click, and be walked through the installation process (just like Windows or the pre-OSX Mac software) but when I actually did this with GAIM 1.3.1 (as an example), and was told the install was a success ... the next time I opened GAIM, I saw that I was using the *older* version? Why does the OS allow this to happen? Further when doing a search on the Linux side for GAIM, version 1.3.1 was nowhere to be found.
This was only resolved when I did a check for newer files for my distribution, noted that GAIM 1.3.1 was there, selected it and then was pleased to see that it had in fact updated GAIM to 1.3.1.
But again, why couldn't *I* do this? I refuse to believe that I am *that* stupid as a "Regular User".
b) I can't tell you how many times I have downloaded software (let's take Firefox 1.0.4 as an example), located what Linux tells me is an executable file (something I would think would mean "Double click this for installation"), I have double-clicked the file and ... *NOTHING* happens. Must I wait for the update to occur via (company)'s updating utility?
This is just not acceptable. With respect, please don't say, "Well, you have to Open a Terminal and type, etc etc etc... Dude, this is pretty easy," because for *ME* that's like working in DOS or in C+ code, neither of which hold interest to me because *I* find those interfaces to be difficult. Programmers and experienced Linux (or Unix) Users may find this "pretty easy" but Regular Users do not.
I want to be able to point, click, make choices, have control of my computing environment, and get on with using the technology.
In summation, the User (ANY User) should have control over his Operating System. Just because the OS uses a mouse, has pretty windows and a bazillion ways to tweak the look and feel of the system, does not make it a great OS. *Usability* makes it a great OS.
Hope is a good thing. I hope for a great and free OS.
Sincerely,
Lawrence
Ithaca, NY
