great job on the Rev 2 GUI [was Re: where the @&$&* is the audio clips listing?]

[Alex Rice]

On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 02:53  AM, Mathewson wrote:

> Of course thick-wazzuks like me rather liked the old App
> Browser that was up-front without fancy options that had to
> be accessed elsewhere.

Having not attained thick-wazzuk level; I'm still working on my 3rd 
degree orange wazzuk belt. :-) All I can say is this is my opinion.
--
The first time I opened Rev 1.1.1, I remember staring at the app 
browser, and the toolbar, and thinking to myself. "what the @#$%^* are 
all those little toolbar buttons for?" For literally 10 minutes I must 
have stared at the Rev UI like a deer caught staring in car headlights. 
Turns out that they were all useful but I applaud the IDE GUI changes 
in Rev 2. A user should not feel like they are staring into the cockpit 
of an F-117 stealth jet when they open the IDE for the first time! And 
I've stumbled my way though plenty of IDEs. Just imagine what a 
beginner would think when presented with the Rev 1.1.1 IDE?

Were there gratuitous changes? It would imply:

1) There was not merit and consideration for all of the UI changes the 
Rev team has made. I wouldn't presume that.

2) There is no equivalent, alternate way for you to use a function of 
the IDE. Can you honestly say App browser changes are "gratuitous" when 
the Application Browser preferences allow you to assign mouse-key 
combinations to all objects in the browser (5 * 3 * 9 = 135 possible 
permutations of mouse-key bindings). No... it's way more than that. 
It's been a while since I took a combinatorics class.

Alex Rice, Software Developer
Architectural Research Consultants, Inc.
alrice at ARCplanning.com
alrice at swcp.com