LiveCode for the rest of us

[Richard Gaskin]

Roger Eller wrote:

 > On 22.09.2015 22:46, Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >>
 >> Heck, on Windows I'd be thrilled if LC could just not underline menu
 >> mnemonic characters until the Alt key is down.  I haven't seen any
 >> other software work like LC since maybe Win95,
 >
 > I use LC every day on Windows, and have never even noticed the
 > mnemonic characters were visible all the time. Nor has it bothered
 > me.  But now it probably will.  Thanks for that Richard!  :)

Happy to help. :)  But a big part of the thanks goes to 
Bramanathaswami's co-worker who was put off by the incorrect text 
baselines in LC's "standard" button style.

His story reminded me of questions I've heard from newcomers over the 
years, but since I spend a lot of time with long-time LC fans I don't 
hear them often enough.  I've been reflecting on that story a lot since 
he told it here.  It may well be the most important UX persona we have.

A lot of us have been using LC and related languages so long we no 
longer see them directly.  A part of our consciousness has adopted a 
habit of explaining away anomalies to the point that we no longer see 
them at all.

When I got started with HC, I was thrilled to be programming at all that 
it didn't matter much to me that HC's buttons didn't look like standard 
Mac buttons, or that scrolling a window required some novelty palette 
rather than just being able to put scrollbars in the window.

When SuperCard came along I finally had a toolkit that gave me true 
Mac-looking buttons and scrollbars and such, but then I needed to deploy 
to Windows and moved to what was then called MetaCard.

Being a long-time Mac-only guy, I was so thrilled that I could write 
stuff for other platforms that just ran at all that I didn't care much 
about the many ways its UIs looked a bit off.  And by the time I'd 
gotten enough experience to have known better, I was hooked, so enamored 
with what then became LiveCode that I'd already developed the habit of 
not seeing.

But newcomers have no such habit. And newcomers are the future of this 
platform.

By its nature, most of the feedback on those sorts of things can't be 
captured, since a newcomer who chose not to use LiveCode isn't posting 
on this list, isn't a member of the forums, and will never be invited to 
participate in a customer survey since they didn't become customers.

So it falls on us to try to regain our fresh vision, to see things as 
they are and anticipate where people like Bramanathaswami's friend might 
say, "Really? Why would I bother?" - and having anticipated that, reduce 
the space between here and "Yes! This is what I was looking for!"

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com