[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Huh? I mean, what the hell are you arguing? Huh???

When I *explicitly* CREATE an alias in the file system, it behaves exactly the same as every other file, in every other location. If I drag it somewhere, it stays put, and if I drag it away from there, it moves to the new location.

The only EXCEPTIONS are the Finder sidebar and the Dock, where something is an alias despite the fact that I didn't MAKE one - I just dragged something there.

There is no way to implement this consistently with the rest of file system behavior.*) This means it's fundamentally broken, not just incompletely implemented.

Filesystem? Huh? I mean, what the heck are you saying?
Please... tell me the pathname of the Sidebar.
Show me a listing in Terminal (and i don't mean a plist).
I wasn't aware it was a filesystem object.

--

I guess this bears repeating:
Sidebar items aren't "real", they're just references. And folks need to learn that.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis 

Filesystem? Huh? I mean, what the heck are you saying?
Please... tell me the pathname of the Sidebar.
Show me a listing in Terminal (and i don't mean a plist).
I wasn't aware it was a filesystem object.

--

I guess this bears repeating:
Sidebar items aren't "real", they're just references. And folks need to learn that.

Yep, and needing to learn something means it's unintuitive. So we're all agreed.

[zro]

Yes, so let's give it an interface where you browse for the items you want to show in the Dock or sidebar then click an "Add" button. Much more intuitive. *pfft*

Having to learn a thing does not make it unintuitive. The only things you don't have to learn are instinctual. And last time I used one, not a damn thing about a computer doesn't have to be learned. So what do we do? Not introduce new concepts that the poor users will have to learn?? Ridiculous.

The poof is intuitive. It tells you that the thing you removed wasn't real. It was a fake. A facade. The only way to delete real files is to put them in the Trash then empty it. Everybody knows this, right? Wrong. So let's all go on pointless rants on how awful deleting files that way is and having to learn it (or horror of horrors, RTFM) is bad design.

Although the Dock and sidebar do desperately need Undo.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis 

Filesystem? Huh? I mean, what the heck are you saying?
Please... tell me the pathname of the Sidebar.
Show me a listing in Terminal (and i don't mean a plist).
I wasn't aware it was a filesystem object.

--

I guess this bears repeating:
Sidebar items aren't "real", they're just references. And folks need to learn that.

If they're not filesystem objects, why are they added as if they were?

And why do they look like they are?

And since you can do all that, why do they suddenly disappear when you drag them somewhere else?

And where do they disappear to?

Since you're arguing that all this can be LEARNED, and you don't see why this is ****ed up on a very fundamental level, there really isn't any point in continuing discussion about how the Dock and the Finder sidebar violate user interface consistency.

If it's not an issue for you personally, more power to you, but it *is* an issue that runs contrary to the very basis of the Macintosh concept.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by zro 

The poof is intuitive. It tells you that the thing you removed wasn't real. It was a fake. A facade.

Uh, what?

The poof tells you exactly one thing: "It's gone."

That's it.

And it's a little unnerving to have a cutesy little animation inform you that you've just lost something you were merely trying to drag to a new location - or onto a backup disk.


And another issue I've encountered recently, with all the people wanting to upgrade to Leopard and asking about making backups *before* upgrading:

It's brilliant that all you really have to back up is your homefolder.

It's mind-numbingly stupid that dragging the homefolder from the only location 90% of users ever see it to an external backup disk MAKES IT DISAPPEAR in a little cloudy "poof"!

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

If they're not filesystem objects, why are they added as if they were?

And why do they look like they are?

Actually, the sidebar looks different. It has a light blue background. People can learn the difference.

Maybe it would be easier if they were buttons, but the sidebar and the Dock would look like ass with buttons. So aesthetics takes precedence over functionality in this case.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by analogika 

The poof tells you exactly one thing: "It's gone."

That's it.

Gone != Deleted.

People don't understand that.

It's like thinking that if you delete a Safari bookmark, you deleted the internet page

-t

[analogika]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Gone != Deleted.

People don't understand that.

Exactly. They don't.

Change the system so that they do, since you won't be changing the people.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by zro 

Having to learn a thing does not make it unintuitive.

Actually, yes, that does make it unintuitive. The word "intuitive" means "able to be grasped by intuition, without conscious learning." Something intuitive is something that you can determine by context without having to think too much about it. If you "have to learn" something, it's not intuitive.

The Macintosh user interface tried (and mostly succeeded) to be intuitive by creating a spatial desktop metaphor where things behaved more or less like real objects and all the information you needed to interact with an object was right in front of you. I was able to suss out how the Macintosh worked just by sitting down in front of one when I was two years old.

On the other hand, I saw computer geeks with years of experience on the Mac flummoxed when they first tried to interact with the Finder sidebar in Panther. (I think the source list appearance in 10.5 is a step forward, since it now looks more like iTunes than an ordinary file listing.)

[peeb]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

It's like thinking that if you delete a Safari bookmark, you deleted the internet page

No, its not. It's like if deleting the Safari bookmark sometimes deleted the internet page, and sometimes didn't. You just had to learn which was which.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

(I think the source list appearance in 10.5 is a step forward, since it now looks more like iTunes than an ordinary file listing.)

True. But it's a remedial fix - more of a patch-up than a solving of the underlying conceptual problem.

And it creates the problem that, while it looks like the source lists in iTunes and iPhoto, it works very *differently* in a couple of crucial respects - mainly, of course, the "poof"-cloud-where'd-it-go? factor.

More inconsistency to disconcert/irritate/confuse users.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

It's like thinking that if you delete a Safari bookmark, you deleted the internet page

Well actually, for many novice users that's exactly what happens. If they lose the bookmark they won't get back to that page. It's just as if the page had been deleted from the internet.

Same thing with these ominous poofs. It doesn't matter if the object is still around. The mere fact that the users thinks it's gone and has no clue how to get it back already makes it bad UI.

The question is not if we understand it and know how to use it. The real issue is if a novice user can. Geeks will always find out how stuff works. What distinguishes good UI form bad UI is if non-geeks can make sense of it too.

[zro]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Actually, yes, that does make it unintuitive. The word "intuitive" means "able to be grasped by intuition, without conscious learning." Something intuitive is something that you can determine by context without having to think too much about it. If you "have to learn" something, it's not intuitive.

So a thing like walking or talking is not intuitive. You have to consciously think about these things as you do them? Get outta here.


So this all means directory trees are bad design because that seems to be a major hurdle for computer illiterates. So let's get rid of directories and just use metadata search and one great big pile of files at the root of the volume just to appease them. Hell, let's just make everything one BIG file! It'll be sooo easy for any idiot to use. "Hey, where're those TPS reports?" They're in the file!

If the user is unwilling to avail themselves of the ****ing manual it is not the fault of the software. The Dock or sidebar is not complicated and does not take any geekiness to understand. Surely you must see this.

What sounds more appealing to you? Having a simple, useful UI that someone may have to click the Help menu a couple times to fully understand or bend the entire computer using experience to the perspective of people too lazy or stupid to do that? I for one would hate to work or play using a Fisher-Price interface.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by zro 

So a thing like walking or talking is not intuitive. You have to consciously think about these things as you do them? Get outta here.

Please don't make me explain the difference between human biology and a computer interface. That's just silly.

Originally Posted by zro 

So this all means directory trees are bad design because that seems to be a major hurdle for computer illiterates. So let's get rid of directories and just use metadata search and one great big pile of files at the root of the volume just to appease them. Hell, let's just make everything one BIG file! It'll be sooo easy for any idiot to use. "Hey, where're those TPS reports?" They're in the file!

I'm not even talking about computer illiterates. There is no reasonable way somebody could be expected to know this even if they're otherwise pretty well-versed in the system — it doesn't behave like anything else in the system. It's counterintuitive, so they "have to learn it." That's called bad interface design.

Originally Posted by zro 

If the user is unwilling to avail themselves of the ****ing manual it is not the fault of the software. The Dock or sidebar is not complicated and does not take any geekiness to understand. Surely you must see this.

No, but it is more difficult than necessary. You could just as well make that argument about anything. The command line isn't complicated or necessarily calling for any geekiness to understand — it just has a lot of stuff you "just have to learn." Ditto for Windows. Ditto for every bit of counterintuitive UI design on the planet.

Originally Posted by zro 

What sounds more appealing to you? Having a simple, useful UI that someone may have to click the Help menu a couple times to fully understand or bend the entire computer using experience to the perspective of people too lazy or stupid to do that? I for one would hate to work or play using a Fisher-Price interface.

What sounds more appealing to you: Having a car with one empty wheel socket or having a car with no engine? Personally, I'd prefer a car designed by somebody competent. Is the rest of the Mac OS X interface too "Fisher-Price" for you? Was the Apple Menu a Fisher-Price interface?

[TETENAL]

The Apple-menu was a lot harder to configure for computer illiterates than the Dock.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Simon 

Well actually, for many novice users that's exactly what happens. If they lose the bookmark they won't get back to that page. It's just as if the page had been deleted from the internet.

Same thing with these ominous poofs. It doesn't matter if the object is still around. The mere fact that the users thinks it's gone and has no clue how to get it back already makes it bad UI.

So, people forget that they MANUALLY dragged the item (bookmark, sidebar item) there in the first place.

I guess they do. But no computer in the world can help their Alzheimer's.

-t

Edit: corrected from grammar

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

The Apple-menu was a lot harder to configure for computer illiterates than the Dock.

This is true - the Dock has its issues, but the Apple menu was far worse.

Originally Posted by turtle777 

So, people forget that they MANUALLY dragged the item (bookmark, sidebar item) there in the first place.

A lot of items in the Dock and Finder sidebar that novices use are in there by default. These shortcuts are often the only way that the user knows how to access these items, and if they remove them by accident, the user often doesn't know what to do to get them back. One example of this is... hmm, let's see... oh! The Downloads folder, which started this thread.

It is far too easy to remove things like the Downloads folder from the Dock by accident - I know I've done it. Of course, I know how to put it back, but even then, it's annoying. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what would be a good way to fix this issue, but it's undeniable that an issue does exist.