VanLUG Email Archive
Greg Smolyn (smolyn@cs.ubc.ca)
Tue, 26 Jan 1999 14:25:28 -0800 (PST)
> 3) Expert GUI: Hands rarely leave the keyboard. Start everything from
> the start menu, root menu or hotkeys. Xterm, the command window, and
> the file manager are just applications used for some tasks.
I'm going to have to disagree with this depiction of an "expert" GUI
user. This particular example is not very much different from the
terminal GUI user, since basically all the programs are being started in
the same way (and, most likely, in the same number of keystrokes).
I've seen "experts" use GUIs with just as many mouse movements as
"newbies"... rarely does it come down to _how_ you move-- it's mostly
about _what_ you move (or move to). Experts know all the different
abilities of their domain: ie. using Alt-TAB in Win3.1, before the "task
bar" was introduced in Win95. Many users didn't know they could switch
between programs until Win95, but the experts did. Now, however, the
option is easily accessable to all... and often using the task-bar is
faster than using Alt-TAB, since it's more random access.
And since I'm being controversial, I'll throw in my two cents on mouse focus.
I'm a FocusFollowsMouse guy (without autoraise, of course). I find it
much more useful, especially when coding, to have a whole pile of emacs
windows open with my different source files. Being able to just tap the
mouse to move over to the next window is very helpful. As well, having no
autoraise is good when referring to some documentation or help file
whilst typing in another window. I can't count the times I've had a
terminal running 'man' (or Netscape with the javadocs) in the foreground
while coding some function call. When you have a lot of windows open,
alt-tabbing around just isn't practical. It's often much faster to use
the mouse.
If you don't believe me, just open a dozen or so terminals and try
navigating between them using only the keyboard. :)
+ -----------------------------------------------
| Greg Smolyn (smolyn@cs.ubc.ca)
| Computer Science
| University of British Columbia
|
| "No one was ever killed by a 35-inch Sony"
| - Lenny in Law and Order on TV violence
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