barnett@grymoire.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) (02/17/90)
Why do most people measure the "quality" of a window system on such cosmetic features like 3-D buttons? I have seen a lot of people on the net "judge" Motif vs. Open Look mostly on the overall look of a UI, or else they select it because it is what their vendor has supplied. While I admit having a "sexy" UI is nice, but I haven't seen many people compare OpenLook vs. Motif on non-religious issues. Some say "Motif is like MS-Windows - therefore it is good." I don't quite follow the argument. I think Mac and MS-Window users can use both Motif and OpenLook without much effort. I would be interested in some real studies that measure the learning curve of Motif vs. OpenLook. I have also seen a lot of people who are experienced in one window system, use another for a few hours and then pass judgement. These judgements tend to be biased and unfair. Since I am not experienced in both Motif and OpenLook, I would like to start a conversation concerning the real differences between the two. (My goal is to learn more about both window system, and hopefully learn more about the best features of both.) Here are some questions to start some discussions? Is the UI easy to use? Does it require any documentation? Is it intutive? How easy is it to move and resize windows? Is the mechanism intutive? Convenient? How easy it it to keep track of the keyboard focus? How easy is it to change the focus? Are there any mechanisms to help you keep track of the state (busy/idle/error) of each application? Is it easy to manage multiple tasks simultaneously? Is there any method used to group related windows? How easy is it to organize the window placement? Does the UI provide features for organizing your desktop? How convenient is the scrollbar? Does the UI support Selections well? How many types of selections? Is it intuitive? How well are choices (i.e. menus) presented to the user? What sequences of actions are needed to select menu items? How much screen real-estate does it require? Does this mechanism scale well? Can the menu system handle large choices well? (i.e. pick one option out of 100). How many actions does it take to make menu selections? Are there accelerators for these actions? Are they user definable? How quickly can the menu be browsed (assume no CPU delays). Is there a desktop metaphor? How complete is it? Drag and drop? Are there accelerators for common actions? Can you redefine them? Notices/Alerts - do they tell you which application caused the alert? What happens if two applications alert you at the same time? Followups to comp.windows.misc - please. And please, let's not get religious. -- -- Bruce G. Barnett barnett@crd.ge.com uunet!crdgw1!barnett
erik@sravd.sra.JUNET (Erik M. van der Poel) (02/18/90)
In article <5348@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Bruce Barnett writes: > I have seen a lot of people on the net "judge" Motif vs. Open Look > mostly on the overall look of a UI, or else they select it because it > is what their vendor has supplied. > > ... > > How convenient is the scrollbar? Good question. How many times have you had to check, very carefully, a large number of lines of text, one by one? In such a situation: A. You want to scroll exactly one line at a time. B. If you accidentally go too far, you want to scroll back one line. C. Or you may want to scroll exactly one page at a time. Now let's see how well some scrollbars meet these requirements. I obviously don't know about all existing scrollbars, but here are some. I expect that the NeWS people and others will follow up about scrollbars that I do not mention. X11R4 Athena scrollbar A. This scrollbar returns the position of the mouse relative to the end of the scrollbar when pointer button 1 or 3 is pressed. Xterm, for example, uses this distance to determine how much to scroll. So it is very difficult to find out where to position the mouse to scroll exactly one line. Of course, it is up to the application to decide what to do with the value returned by the scrollbar, but in any case, the appearance of the scrollbar does not make it immediately obvious to the user what needs to be done to scroll exactly one line. B. This scrollbar makes it easy to scroll up or down using pointer button 1 or 3. C. It is difficult to scroll exactly one page (see above). Motif & HP(Xw) scrollbars A. The arrows at the ends of the scrollbar make it easy to scroll exactly one line. B. Since the arrows are at the ends of the scrollbar, the user must move the mouse all the way to the other end to scroll in the other direction. C. It is impossible to scroll exactly one page. Open Look scrollbar A. The arrows in the elevator make it easy to scroll exactly one line. B. Though the arrows are close together, the user must still move the mouse to scroll in the other direction. C. It is easy to scroll exactly one page, once the user finds out that clicking beneath the elevator can be used for this purpose. X10R4 xterm scrollbar (a classic) A. The up-and-down arrow button makes it easy to scroll exactly one line. B. Since the up arrow and down arrow are in one area, it is easy to scroll in either direction using mouse buttons 1 and 3. C. It is easy to scroll exactly one page, once the user finds out that the shift key is held down for this purpose. I could go on and on about the user interface, and also about the programmer's interface, but I think I'll stop here. Just one last thing: I have hacked the Xw scrollbar to produce one that meets all of my 3 requirements. I could send copies to anyone who is interested. Erik M. van der Poel erik@sra.co.jp (Japan) SRA, 1-1-1 Hirakawa-cho, Chiyoda-ku erik%sra.co.jp@uunet.uu.net (USA) Tokyo 102 Japan. TEL +81-3-234-2692 erik%sra.co.jp@mcvax.uucp (Europe)