Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!sean
From: sean@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Sean P. Nolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: UserLevel Stuff
Message-ID: <14936@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 9 Aug 89 19:42:09 GMT
References: <14906@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <8657@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: sean@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Sean P. Nolan)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 38

3 Points:

(1) When you create an application, you design the user interface to provide 
    easy, complete access to the information in question. Providing *A* menubar
    is a good idea --- it IS part of the Mac interface. But providing A menubar
    is different from providing the HYPERCARD menubar. For some applications,
    choosing "Print Report" is uneccesary (I never could spell that word) and
    would, in face, confuse a beginning user. A data-entry or otherwise 
    inexperienced user has no need to even know he or she is IN Hypercard,
    bringing me to my second point.

(2) In order to get people to use your stack in particular -- and computers
    in general -- you need to make them simple. Most users want to get a job
    done and don't care if you create their application in Hypercard or C++
    or Assembler or Elven Runes. Thus, many of these people don't know what
    the Home card IS. Expecting them to set their UserLevel properly can be
    unwise. We can argue back and forth about whether this is a good thing.
    I don't think it is, and would like to see everyone jumping up and down to
    use their computers. But sometime we all have to get down from dreamland
    and accept reality. By doing that, we'll reach the ideal a lot faster.

(3) To back off a bit, my remarks were really intended more regarding the
    than the UserLevel, but I'll stand by them for both cases. The edge in
    tomorrow's World will go to those who can take reams and reams of data
    and reduce them to knowledge. This knowledge is then useful. If you force
    a user, computer-literate or no, to sift through excess information to get
    at what he wanted in the first place, you've not done your job. Thus,
    until the world is computer-literate and we can depend on people's ability
    to understand the computer's full power and USE it, we have to create
    applications that will be useful to them. 

                                                  --- Sean 
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| Sean P. Nolan     |                                   |  "Let's face it:   |
| Dartmouth College | Net: Sean_Nolan@Mac.Dartmouth.EDU |   IBM is no fun."  |
| Hinman Box 2658   | MCI Mail: snolan                  |     ::::::::::     |
| Hanover, NH 03755 |                                   |   John C. Dvorak   |
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