clueless GNOME bashing (was Re: [rescue] Mozilla Firefox)

[Nathan Raymond]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Nathan Raymond wrote:
>
> > Because you can have windows within windows - one of the single most
> > stupid UI conventions ever invented.  Whoever came up with that one should
> > be shot.
>
> I actually like it, but it's really only useful for certain applications:
> ones that I use for a long stretch at a time.

I might concede this if a few conditions were met: there was no more
elegant solution, all applications were forced to follow that
convention, and there was no way to instantiate an application more than
once.

It's biggest drawback is the cognitive dissonance it causes.  It's right
up there with the Windows task bar 'buttons' that are also toggles for
each window/application.  As a Windows administrator (don't ask, I was
doing Solaris admin work, didn't like the large corporation I was doing
work for, left the job to look for something better, then the dot com
bubble burst and I ended up taking what I could find, not what I wanted) I
have to deal with this stuff every day, and while you can live with it and
have adjusted to it, I find it unpleasant and aggravating every time.  I'm
convinced that Microsoft products fill a kind of collective masochistic
streak present in most people, and create a kind of hazing effect that
makes people want to draw other people into it so that they have to go
through the same ritualistic pain of learning to use their products (which
is how I think iconographic toolbars have caught on and remain popular,
besides being a bad way to do work processing and other activities in the
long run, as compared to keyboard shortcuts and well designed menus).  And
don't get me started on wizards...

--
Nathan Raymond