I'm posting this comment from Mozilla Firebird (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/), an open-source web browser.
Now if I wasn't a hacker type I wouldn't be using Firebird; essentially nobody but geeks even knows it exists. But the reason I use it over Microsoft Internet Explorer is the user interface is better. It blocks pop-up windows. It doesn't have six toolbar buttons I never use (Home, Favorites, Media, History, Discuss, Edit with FrontPage...). It has what I need: Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop, and a Google web search box. The Tools > Options menus are more thoughtfully designed and easy to use than MSIE's equivalent.
If you were right, Firebird shouldn't exist. Somehow usability is getting addressed out there. Firebird is the most usable web browser for Windows, bar none.
Why?
Usability doesn't need to cost tons of money. In fact you only need to test [usability] with five users (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html).
Usability doesn't require tons of expertise. Often most usabile UI is to just copy what the user already knows (i.e. Windows) --something any open source hacker can do.
Actually the main resource required is, you have to care. Why do hackers care about usability?
It has to do with how open source hackers get paid (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/ar01s06.html). They're not paid with money. They get paid in the ego: when their software becomes widely used; when they earn the respect of their peers. Both these motivating factors push usability. The latter only works if the developers on a given project believe that usability is a fundamental facet of software excellence. Hackers vary widely on this, so open source products vary widely in usability. But in general, usability has gained a lot of ground in hackers' esteem over the past 5 years.
It has to do with market forces. Companies that rely on open source software dedicate resources to software usability and documentation because their business (typically) is to (a) convince people to use the stuff and (b) sell support and consulting; unusable software is costly to support.
It has to do with scratching a personal itch. What's confusing and annoying to my dad once a month is confusing and annoying to me ten times a day, because I use computers for all the same things he does (e-mail, web surfing, chatting, word processing, buyin' stuff, digital photos, music) --just more often, and for a few other things (coding and blogging) besides. I.e., the overlap between Joe Hacker's interests and Joe User's interests is greater than you've suggested.
Now this only gets me so far. Linux usability does in fact suck. But it was a lot worse five years ago, and for those of us watching things change, your article seems a bit facile.
In fact it reminds me of my own confident opinion back in 1996 that Microsoft wanted to control every single thing that happened on the desktop, but they were never going to make it on the server and didn't really care. I forget why I thought this, but it was a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates Microsoft. No need to make the same mistake in reverse with Linux.
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Hmmm.
Date: 2003-11-22 08:52 pm (UTC)Now if I wasn't a hacker type I wouldn't be using Firebird; essentially nobody but geeks even knows it exists. But the reason I use it over Microsoft Internet Explorer is the user interface is better. It blocks pop-up windows. It doesn't have six toolbar buttons I never use (Home, Favorites, Media, History, Discuss, Edit with FrontPage...). It has what I need: Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop, and a Google web search box. The Tools > Options menus are more thoughtfully designed and easy to use than MSIE's equivalent.
If you were right, Firebird shouldn't exist. Somehow usability is getting addressed out there. Firebird is the most usable web browser for Windows, bar none.
Why?
Actually the main resource required is, you have to care. Why do hackers care about usability?
Now this only gets me so far. Linux usability does in fact suck. But it was a lot worse five years ago, and for those of us watching things change, your article seems a bit facile.
In fact it reminds me of my own confident opinion back in 1996 that Microsoft wanted to control every single thing that happened on the desktop, but they were never going to make it on the server and didn't really care. I forget why I thought this, but it was a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates Microsoft. No need to make the same mistake in reverse with Linux.