[Idle-dev] /me waves

[Katie Cunningham]

UX people help make apps more intuitive by thinking about a user is
experiencing an application. What are their assumptions? What do they
notice? How do they explore the application? How is information
grouped in the interface?

Some are also designers, but a fair number are also developers. I'm a
version of a UX person (I do accessibility work), but I mostly sling
code for a living. I've also known a few who only do UX.

"Up arrow moves cursor" has confused every Python developer I've put
IDLE in front of. It might be time to rethinking including it, or at
least letting us have options for the different behaviors. I would be
much more likely to open IDLE if it mimicked my shell more.

A good place to start might be taking the average Python developer and
investigating what they expect from something like IDLE and moving
from there.

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Kevin Walzer <kw at codebykevin.com> wrote:
> On 3/22/13 10:09 AM, Katie Cunningham wrote:
>>
>> You'd be surprised re: designers and UX. There's quite a few in the
>> Python community, but many assume that they have nothing to give to
>> core. I'd love to pull some of them in!
>
>
> OK, seems like a worthy goal.
>
> This question is motivated by genuine curiosity: what do UX specialists do,
> exactly? What are their skill sets? Do they code, do they prototype stuff in
> Photoshop, etc? What can they contribute to Python development?
>
> My experience with UX specialists/designer is limited to using open-source
> icon sets in my apps, so I don't know much about the work UX specialists do,
> and would like to learn more.
>
>
>> As for IDLE, some of my problems stem from having a shell-like
>> environment that doesn't act like a shell. Up arrow moves my cursor? I
>> get history through clicking? Why does the Python shell have dots to
>> indicate a block, but IDLE doesn't? Also, parts of the interface don't
>> seem to scale well as you change the font size.
>
>
> "Up arrow moves cursor": that's the expected behavior of the Tk text widget
> on which IDLE is based. I for one would find it very jarring to see this
> behavior changed.
>
>
>>
>> I think we need to step away from a few people that say 'it works for
>> me' and ask 'how can we make it work for the community?'
>
>
> Before we can do that, however, we need to agree on what the problems are.
> You consider the behavior of the up arrow in IDLE a bug; I consider it a
> feature.
>
> Another logistical problem to be aware of: if IDLE is to be kept in the
> core, then any revisions to it must be based on its current UI toolkit,
> Tkinter. IDLE inherits a lot of Tkinter's default behaviors. Changing IDLE's
> GUI library would be an entirely different conversation (one that crops up
> annually on c.l.py, it seems). If you move IDLE outside the core or fork it,
> then you have a lot more freedom to experiment.
>
> Of course, my own preferences may not be representative of everyone's, and
> I'm certainly not going to have sour grapes if a consensus emerges to
> overhaul IDLE in these directions. I always have Emacs to fall back on. :-)
>
>
> --Kevin
>
> --
> Kevin Walzer
> Code by Kevin/Mobile Code by Kevin
> http://www.codebykevin.com
> http://www.wtmobilesoftware.com