[kepler-dev] Re: [seek-dev] scrollbar additions to kepler

[Edward A Lee]

At 01:14 PM 7/27/2004 -0500, Rod Spears wrote:
>Although having the panner AND the scrollbars seems optimal, but because 
>of possible architectural issues it would be reasonable to me to have it 
>be either or. The panner or scrollbars, especially if this could be easy 
>to specify via a persistent preference.

As a general rule, we have tried to avoid going down the route of
making everything in the user interface configurable and optional.
If there is a "better" UI, then it's better to enforce use of the
"better" UI than to allow people to configure their system to have
an inferior UI.

The X window system is the classic example of the other extreme.
The defaults are completely useless as a UI, and everyone has to
be a UI designer to get something that can be used at all...
Most people are not good UI designers, so they copy a set of
preferences from a friend, who is probably also not a good UI designer.

One downside of letting users configure their UI is that when they
demo a bad UI (picture outlandish colors and Meta-Shift-X to do
anything), then we look bad.  The tool looks bad because the user
configured it to be bad.  Better to not give them that option...

The exception to this is when two conflicting mechanisms are
identified that are useful in two distinct circumstances...
But I don't see that with scrollbars vs. panner.  I suspect this
is more an issue of familiarity than functionality.

Not that unfamiliarity isn't an important problem, but the fact is,
it's ephemeral... Everything becomes familiar after you live with it
for a few days.

Edward



------------
Edward A. Lee, Professor
518 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
phone: 510-642-0455, fax: 510-642-2739
eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal