Quote:

Original post by Mayrel Did you know that you could search for "link:www.google.com" to show sites that link to google? "intitle:Foobar" to show sites that have Foobar in the <title> element? I didn't until I started digging through the documentation. Google may have a simple interface, but if you don't already know how to use it, it's not made easy. You either have to learn the special operators, or use the clunky and annoying advanced interface.

That's actually the kind of compromise you said was needed earlier!

On the one hand, the visual interface that Google presents is spartan. Clean. Simple. It meets the needs of the vast majority of users. For power users or other so inclined, it presents an Advanced Search interface which exposes much of the internal functionality at the expense of some accessibility (the "intitle" and "link" operators you mentioned are graphically exposed via this Advanced Search).

For even more power and flexibility - advanced search features without the horrid and still-constrained Advanced Search interface - Google provides a Help page with links to a complete list of operators as well as an explanation of the search engine's interface syntax.

While you're right that Google's search engine is the core innovation, don't knock the interface. It's a brilliant piece of work that balances the concerns and needs of a wide variety of users, rewarding those who spend a little extra time with more functionality without depriving those who don't of baseline productivity.

Emacs and VI have a lot to learn from google...

Quote:

Original post by owl I actually think that requiring you to dig increase the probability of showing yourselves how much you really care about the topic in question.

Oh, yes. Shovelling through shit makes dirt that much more valuable</sarcasm>

Quote:

If you really bother about Open Source innovations (beyond expending 20-30 minutes installing Redhat and realising it is choppi), then you should look up for it yourselves.

Your unimaginative attempts at characterization aside, You're. Just. Wrong. Now go hoot on some tree or something.

You know, sometimes I wonder if Oluseyi has a sense of humor.

Quote:

Original post by owl Quote: Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by owl In which area exactly? Take a look at this list or this other. You may be surprised about how many innovative projects you may find there. You should have pointed them out to us. Requiring us to go digging increases the probability that we give up looking sooner rather than later, and conclude that our hypothesis actually is valid! In essence, the onus is upon you to refute our charge through the preponderance of evidence. I actually think that requiring you to dig increase the probability of showing yourselves how much you really care about the topic in question. If you really bother about Open Source innovations (beyond expending 20-30 minutes installing Redhat and realising it is choppi), then you should look up for it yourselves.

Er, no. This is a "debate", you see. It works like this:

_We_ present _our_ evidence to support _our_ argument.

_You_ present _your_ evidence to support _your_ argument.

It really is that simple.

*

I'm with Oluseyi on this one. Usability is the key to successful software. Those who advocate that OSS' target audience is its own developers are merely sealing OSS' fate. OSS will _never_ reach its full potential as long as it remains the purview of those for whom "emacs" is a pinaccle of software engineering. Emacs is a Victorian folly. It is _the_ classic example of all that is wrong with current OSS philosophy.

Let's get this crystal clear: OSS isn't about beating closed source software. Both forms of development have existed side-by-side since at least 1983 (when the GNU project was formally inaugurated). CSS and GNU are _complementary_, not rivals.

(Note: while the Open Source Initiative and the term "Open Source" are relatively recent, the guiding philosophy behind the GNU organisation is still the foundation of OSS. Hence, I use GNU and OSS interchangeably for the purposes of this post.)

The initial purpose of GNU has been achieved: to create (and I quote directly from the GNU site): "a complete free software system named ``GNU'' (GNU's Not Unix) that is upwardly compatible with Unix."

There is no denying that GNU/Linux is an industrial-strength Unix-compatible OS. That much has been achieved. GNU has succeeded there. But that's just the first step. It's the foundation -- the first turn of the key in the ignition. NOW, things are supposed to get interesting... and yet, the GNUmobile is still sitting there in the parking bay.

Folks: if you can't even give the stuff away for free and people continue to buy closed-source, commercial alternatives, you -- yes, YOU -- are clearly doing something wrong.

Ask yourselves why.

The answer is obvious to anyone who isn't a self-professed "geek" or "techie". It's crystal clear to people like myself, who teach people to use computers for a living. I'm no great fan of Windows or even Apple's OS X, but they're still leaps and bounds ahead of today's GNU/Linux distros in terms of usability.

Usability applies to all aspects of software development. How much time have developers lost because their source versioning system has a lousy UI? How many times have you been tripped up because an API's functions aren't named consistently?

There are those who will cheerfully throw together a paragraph's worth of BASH commands, pipes and regex code at a computer and make it perform their every whim. The trick isn't how to *hide* all of that. The trick is how to make _ordinary people_ -- you know, those people who _didn't_ study Computer Science at uni -- achieve the same results without getting a migraine.

The computer's sole purpose is to make the _user's_ life easier. That's the foundation of usability design.

OSS developers, listen up! OSS does not give you carte blanche to write whatever you want, however you want

. Any monkey can write code. The challenge isn't to come up with the latest and greatest optimisation for the Quicksort algorithm. The challenge today is to make software *everyone* can use.

Microsoft know this. They have a full-on Usability Lab, a big research arm and plenty of money to throw at this problem.

Apple also know this. While their software people might have dropped the ball occasionally, their industrial design -- and hardware is as much a part of the problem as software -- is second to none.

There is no shame in learning from the masters. Xerox PARC's pioneering research into GUIs would have been for naught if Apple and MS (and plenty of others) hadn't been inspired by their work. Apple and MS have never claimed to have "invented" GUIs or the desktop metaphor. (Patenting isn't the same thing; it's just business.) But without those original trailblazers and pioneers at Xerox's labs, the PC might never have caught on.

MS and Apple are, however, tied to their customers. MS cannot innovate too much, too quickly, without losing customers who might get confused by all the changes. They also have to balance innovation with backwards compatibility -- the curse of every successful software company.

So that leaves YOU: The OSS Crew. This is where you come in! Pioneering! Blazing new trails!

After all, GNU/Linux is just a Unix clone. It's not as if that's never been done before, so stop the navel-gazing. Look up at the horizon and move on. Please! The software world _needs_ an indie scene.

--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

(Shut up, I'm on a roll here!)

Amen.

So now all OSS developers have to do is figure out something totally cool and new. What is the biggest pain that everybody has using operating systems, one so fundemental and isn't solved yet.

totally transparent method of driver management. Windows is better than Linux in this respect, but there's still some trouble.

Quote:

Original post by Cipher3D You know, sometimes I wonder if Oluseyi has a sense of humor.

You missed my bit about hooting on a tree?! Geddit? Owl? Hoot?

I give up.

For those of you who are now starting to ask questions, here's a bunch of threads that have tried to collect some of these questions and discuss possibilities (that I know of; feel free to add your own threads):

On form factors...
...GUIs...
...filesystems...
...desktops...
...PCs vs consumer appliances (usability)...
...stealing focus (usability)...
...and "re-imagineering" Unix.

The last post is mine. Forum didn't ask me to login.

Why does `Anonymous Poster` have a rating of 950? Just curious...

Quote:

Original post by Cipher3D Why does `Anonymous Poster` have a rating of 950? Just curious...

Something about default filter level. It was allocated such that Anonymous Posters are visible at the default level, but invisible at any higher level. Or something like that.