[WEB4LIB] RE: of mouse balls and such

[Moderow, Kevin]

Long ago the command prompt was considered unforgiving.  Today the mouse is
unintuitive.    One must ask: Just how much dumbing down is required?  I
fear the day when being required to think is an assault on the individual's
self worth.

-----Original Message-----
From: Roy Tennant [mailto:rtennant at library.berkeley.edu]
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2000 3:22 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: of mouse balls and such


And to further drive home Tara's point, do you realize how unintuitive and
downright odd it is to move an object on one plane that manipulates
another object distant from it on a plane perpendicular to the first?
*That's* the experience of using a mouse, and to expect anyone to
get it immediately is asking a bit much, in my opinion.
Roy

On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Tara Calishain wrote:

> 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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>