-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Jul 7, 2006, at 12:08 AM, Brad Knowles wrote:
One thing that really concerns me is excessive complexity in the user interface. As a MacOS X/Safari user, I've found so damn bloody
many web sites that are totally hosed for me, regardless of whether I allow
them to use JavaScript or not. Virtually every single web page designer
I've ever met has always had Windows/Internet Explorer on the brain, and they
don't care about anything else. In fact, I honestly believe that many of
them actively work to break their websites on all other types of
browsers and platforms, just so that they can force you to use Windows and Internet Explorer.
OTOH, I've used Linux and OSX, and before that NeXT, Solaris and
various Unixes for (unfortunately, way :) longer than there's been a
web, and except for the Windows programming I do at work, haven't
ever used IE for any substantial amount of time. I'm not excusing
poor sites or Windows-specific sites, but for the most part, these
days most sites are at least usable with Firefox on various
platforms. (The one sole recent exception was the SQLAlchemy doc
pages which gave Firefox fits but rendered just fine in Safari -- and
I'm sure those guys didn't tailor their pages for IE.). Yeah, you
hit the occasional WMV or ActiveX laden site, but I'm much more
bugged by the Flash-only sites that are an avoidable annoyance for
me, but I can imagine are a scream-out-loud frustration for screen
reader based users.
Now, I know that you're not that kind of person, and you will actively test your work with MacOS X/Safari, and as many other browser/OS
platforms you can. But the more complexity that is built into the user
interface, the higher the likelihood is that something will accidentally happen somewhere to seriously break something for someone else.
Actually, I think skilled and judicious use of modern web technology
can help to /reduce/ the complexity of Mailman's interface.
Something I constantly struggle with is the plethora of configuration
variables (both via the web u/i and in mm_cfg.py) that makes the
system highly complicated. I would love to have a self-discoverable
interface, or an interface that can be used to selectively reveal
just the parts you're interested.
- -Barry
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin)
iQCVAwUBRK3kGXEjvBPtnXfVAQJfrQQAoYkRLIATvJrLsM2kx88DF4UZHbeoXXZI CrIhzM2URy+IIcRMQCBn8jfqnyIeTvVUcemHiCjpDyhyVEuYlYXtvjT9d5W9DrjR OW3rlDViFfuEA6NSU+/QS8YDhokpf2tLpbdKiKLdqgiAdMGR8+jhHFEsmbsha79d xX7xKMzNmOY= =/Mp9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----