Planet Geek!: Snowy Porch

snowy_porch.jpg
Originally uploaded by eidolon

A quick pic before I go out and assault the walkway and the driveway. We're in the middle of a January snowstorm here, and stuff is piling up outside. There's been various forecasts of anything from 6" to 14". It keeps fluctuating. We're at about 6" now, and it's still coming down.

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Cloned from: Planet Geek!
Category: Geekitude
Full article & comments: Link (Comment ticker: )

Planet Geek!: Dear FOSS Developers

I'm speaking specifically to FOSS developers who are involved GUI / Human Interface type development and design.

There's apparently a percentage of ya'll who seem to think that the proper way to execute a program represented by an icon is to just click on it.

Once.

I have one thing to say to that. Or. Several things. With the same message...

NO NO NO! WRONG WRONG WRONG! BAD BAD BAD!

Every once in a while someone seems to think that it's proper to make it so if you click on, say, a Firefox icon, it means 'Start Firefox RIGHT NOW'. This is ridiculously, painfully WRONG. A desktop contains objects. If you touch something, it doesn't mean "EXECUTE THIS RIGHT NOW, NO MATTER WHAT IT IS".

Imagine if this were taken on in the real world. Your car would start whenever you touched your keyring. If you touched the handle on your sink faucet, water would come gushing out immediately.

This pattern has been cropping up in KDE on occasion, though I'm assured it will not be the case in KDE4. Gnome is rife with it. And Puppy Linux, an OS that can run via LiveCD, will happily start up a 60meg program (Firefox) if you happen to touch the Firefox icon on the desktop. Just touch it. A process that can take 4-5 minutes in LiveCD mode.

So, in conclusion. No. For the love of all that is sane, do not do perpetuate this bad design.

Warm regards, me.

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Cloned from: Planet Geek!
Category: Geekitude
Full article & comments: Link (Comment ticker: )