Re: SEUL: Adding Flash to SEUL

[Michael Peck <mjpeck@mailhost.rsn.hp.com>]

Greg Bell wrote:
> 
> Tonight as I was almost sleeping a thought occured to me.
> Alright let's see a show of hands on this, who here has seen Jurasic
> Park, ahh one, two, three good just about everyone.  Do you remember the
> sceen where the little girl sits down at a computer console and says
> "Unix I know Unix".  Remember what was on the screen at the time a
> virtual directory of the systems files.  I think this was neat and would
> be a great way to attract people to SEUL.
> Now the question is, does anyone know what program was running at the
> time???
> 
> Just a thought.

While it's interesting to consider such an interface, I propose that we
resolve to put off interface innovation until after the first release.
In fact, let's make up a name for things that won't be in the first
release: "!First" items.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do all we can to put up a good interface for
the end user; it's critical. But we should probably eschew grandiose
ideas, as neat as they are, for a number of reasons.

First of all, we don't really have time, and we can't afford to distract
our focus. Secondly, we don't have a foundation on which to base such
grandiose innovation, and until it's in place, any revolutionary efforts
will be wasted. Finally, there's nobody here (as far as I know) who is
an expert or well-versed in interface theory, and to my mind, popular
opinion to the contrary, such expertise is critical to designing
interfaces, period.

I *do* think we should keep thinking about such things, however. Their
time will come for SEUL, to be sure, and some of that thinking will
translate into natural benefits for what we do in the first release, in
terms of consistent, creative, but humble, interfaces for our programs.

MJP
-- 
Michael J. Peck
Hewlett-Packard, Convex Division
mjpeck@convex.com
Opinions expressed above are not necessarily those of my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simple End User Linux Mailing list
To be removed from this mailing list send a message to majordomo@txcc.net
with the line
unsubscribe seul-project
in the body of the letter.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------