[OT] The lessons of Ion

[Ken Ray]

On 9/17/10 5:17 PM, "Peter Alcibiades" <palcibiades-first at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

> I have to tell you, this is an experience to make you think and scratch
> your head and think some more.  If Apple were right, it should not work.
> If Gnome were right, it should not work.  And on day 1 it does not.  But on
> day n, it not only works, it feels just perfectly right and automatic, your
> fingers just do things, and you forget you are using Ion, its just how
> things are done here.
> 
> Try it.  You will never feel the same about HIGs and that guy and his silly
> law again.  Fitts he might have been.  And you will never again confuse
> being easy to use on day 1 for the ignorant with being easy to use  when
> you know it well and are experienced.  No, they are completely different
> things.

Thanks for the insight, Peter... sometimes turning the UI inside out is just
what's needed to work with it more efficiently. It reminds me of the
once-useful and now-not-so-much-so utility for Mac OS X called
"Quicksilver"... it allowed you to do much of the same kind of thing - hit a
keystroke, type a few characters, hit Enter, and you're there - having
launched an app, or invoked a process, or even run a service like web
searches or text parsing.

Sometimes "less" really IS "more"...

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/