[WEB4LIB] RE: of mouse balls and such

[Tara Calishain]

At 11:48 AM 1/3/2000 -0800, Drew, Bill wrote:
>A friend of mine (and she shall remain anonymous to protect the guilty) told
>me the following story once about one of her first experiences with a mouse
>on a computer.  This was when personal computers first showed up in the
>large department stores as items available for purchase.  She was with her
>teenage daughter and they walked over to a computer that was running a demo
>of Windows.  The instructions on the screen said "Place mouse here and
>click."  My friend picked up the mouse and placed it on the screen and
>pushed the buttons with no results.  While this was happening her daughter
>tried to disappear into the wood work.  She and her husband now laugh at the
>story.

These are the kinds of things that really pluck my last nerve. The only thing
your friend is guilty of is following instructions to the letter. She has 
no need to
feel ashamed or embarrassed because instructions are written badly or
computer interfaces are so confusing that we humans -- who are still not
accurately emulated by computers, BTW -- can't understand them.

Imagine how much more pleasant your friend's experience would have been if
the mouse had been labeled MOUSE and the instructions on the screen had
said, "Slide the mouse back and forth." Once slid, the instructions could 
change
to, "Keep sliding the mouse. See that arrow that's going back and forth on the
screen? That's called the mouse pointer. Slide the mouse around until the
you've moved the pointer into this blue box. Then push one of those two buttons
on top of the mouse."

Sigh,

Tara


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