[Fwd: [dev] Re: [core] IMP frames/frameless]

[Rich Lafferty]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 09:57:07PM +0100, Atif Ghaffar (aghaffar@developer.ch) wrote:
> 
> By the way, "Dont give too much options to users, they are dumb" isnt
> that what M$ is all about?

No, it's called "engineering". You might find it useful to read over
Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini's _First Principles of Interface Design_,
available on the Web at

   http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html

Bruce was the founder of Apple's Human Interface Group and now
consults with the Nielsen Norman Group. In particular, see the 
section under the headings, "Autonomy" (especially the warehouse
analogy) and "Consistency". 

I'm afraid I don't understand the Microsoft reference, unless it was
just to get a knee-jerk reaction. I'd be happy to have IMP be as
popular as Hotmail. And "they are dumb" doesn't at all follow
logically from "don't give too many options to users". The latter is a
*feature*. Users aren't very good at designing their own environments;
for an interesting commentary on one effect of that, see this _Suck_
article on skins:

   http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/04/10/

Anyhow, look. You did up patches that radically changed the interface
of IMP from where it's been going for the past year. You *must* have
known in doing so that there was a chance they wouldn't be integrated,
and that's what's happened, which is part of how the system works.
But you've come out of it with an offer of help from one of the core
developers to assist in keeping your patches up with the current
version, which is much further than most rejected patches go. (See,
for instance, 
 
   http://www.mutt.org/links.html#patch

for an example of how much gets rejected from something that *is*
unapologetically designed for experts.)

I *will* note that the sour-grapes approach probably won't be changing
anyone's mind in your favour, though.

   -Rich

-- 
------------------------------ Rich Lafferty ---------------------------
 Sysadmin/Programmer, Instructional and Information Technology Services
   Concordia University, Montreal, QC                 (514) 848-7625
------------------------- rich@alcor.concordia.ca ----------------------