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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: markup, UI (Re: Attribute Order)
 At 11:06 AM -0400 6/22/03, Simon St.Laurent wrote: >UI work was a strange and alien concept for most programmers, who kept >it as simple (and often cryptic) as possible. Over time, toolkits >emerged to let programmers create user interfaces more easily, though >the results weren't always pleasant for users. Over time, UI work has >shifted from "make it easy for programmers" to "make sure it's easy for >the users". I don't buy this at all. Yes, the story you tell happened, but not for the reasons you cite, and without any significant implications for XML work. User interfaces were atrocious despite the toolkits because programmers didn't know squat about user interface design. When the toolkit [expletive deleted] it was because the people who wrote the toolkit didn't know enough about writing user interfaces. It had nothing to do with a trade-off between making the toolkit easy for users or easy for programmers. In fact, the opposite is true. Toolkits designed by people who actually understand human-computer interaction are easy for users AND easy for programmers. The classic example here is Apple and the Mac Toolbox. In many cases, however, the interfaces still [expletive deleted] and the programmers still don't know they're doing something wrong. This has nothing to do with the APIs, and everything to do with programmer education and skills. Today on Windows and occasionally Linux there are decent user interfaces in those few cases where the product is large enough for the development team to include people whose job is specifically user interface design and testing. On most other products, the UIs are a disaster. Macintosh programs to this day are still easier to use than Windows and Unix programs because Apple has spent a great deal of effort teaching its developer community the right way to do things. It's virtually impossible to learn how to draw a menu bar on the Macintosh without simultaneously learning what should be in the menu bar and where. On Windows and Linux, I daily encounter programs that screw up very basic concerns like what belongs in the file menu and which menu items have which menu shortcuts. Maybe there is a lesson for XML here: a developer who understands XML will design both APIs and XML vocabularies that are easy for authors and consumers. A developer who does not understand XML will design a confusing mess that annoys everybody. The experts will still be able to use the confusing mess to make decent software (just like UI experts can create usable software on Windows). The non-experts will be able to make a confusing mess using even the best API. What's needed is both a good API and good education about how to use XML. Neither alone is sufficient. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@m... Processing XML with Java (Addison-Wesley, 2002) http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0201771861/cafeaulaitA 
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