Edit History

 

You said this:

 

I said this

 

 

That explains HALF of the not-a-contradiction-that-you-think-is-a-contradiction part.  Like in Back to the Future "Where we're going we don't need roads", I'm talking about a scenario where we don't even need TARGETS.  In other words, the travel time becomes irrelevant, because it becomes automatically optimized for the user.

 

If I just have to swipe left for a function to occur, I can swipe a little bit left, or I can make a big swipe left.  They'll both get the job done.  The reason it's FASTER is because I can be sloppy and not even THINK about it.  I don't have to concentrate and hit a target.  That saves me time and brainpower.  Now a short motion will be faster IF I don't spend time thinking about and concentrating on doing it.  The time savings comes from having no target and requiring no precision.  Again, this sort of transcends Fitt's Law.  There's no contradiction on the travel time because it can be as short or as long as you want to be.  All that matters is the total time required for the action, which is going to be more rapid than almost all scenarios of having targets.  I hope this part makes sense.

 

MISSING HALF OF THE EXPLANATION:

Alt / Win Tab in Windows still isn't as efficient as the dock for multiple reasons.  Some of these are subtle, others are not.  I hope you follow here:

 

-I think what I didn't state overtly is I'm assuming you SELECT the appropriate program you want.  So if you have 12 programs open, you're not JUST trying to get their names, you ALSO  want to SELECT the program you want.

 

-First off, Win-tab is not faster.  There's a delay in arranging the squares before the names come up.  Now this is only milliseconds, but I can literally scroll through all my items on the dock during the time I'm waiting on the system.  However, alt-tab is near-instantaneous, so we'll go with that.

 

-This is a subtle inefficiency, but it's still there.  If you have all the names displayed at once for many tasks, this is all over the screen and your eyes may have to hunt around to know where the name of what you're trying to find is.  Using the dock method, the name is always going to appear directly above where the highlight icon is.  Now just so you don't think I'm contradicting later, I WOULD want the screen flooded with info like this if I was browsing through a LOT of files, like hundreds.  But for open tasks, it's slightly faster to have the visuals a little more concentrated.  Again though, this is subtle.  See, you say it's a contradiction that I have to move through the names my way, HOWEVER, since I know exactly where the names are going to appear, it could STILL be faster.  It's not necessarily a contradiction.  It could be on average, it's still faster!  Even though the information is presented instantaneously, my EYES have more travel time now compared to the dock.  I don't have hard evidence on this however, but I hope you at least understand that this isn't a black and white thing.

 

-Next, the inefficiency differs depending on how you're using Alt-Tab.

If it's keyboard only:  You either have to hit tab multiple times until you find your target, then if you overshoot, go through it all over again, OR use the arrow keys to navigate it.  That means that if you only use one hand, this becomes a less efficient method because you're having to concentrate more (or I do, anyway) and hit the tab key the appropriate number of times.  So if you need the 10th program, you need to hit the tab key 10 times.  Alternately, you can use the arrow keys, but now you require TWO hands to accomplish your task and it takes your hand off the mouse, plus navigating via arrows is a little inefficient, it depends on how many programs there are.  So either you're spamming the tab key, or you're having to take your hand off the mouse and it may STILL be less efficient.

 

If it's the mouse and keyboard:

Here's where it honestly depends.  The travel time depends on where your cursor was when you pressed alt-tab, however, the targets are a decent size. However, this still has some inefficiencies:

1. There's still the visual hunting for the name which I mentioned earlier (though I admit this is subtle)

2. You can accidentally close your program because now "x's" are available as you navigate.  This means it takes a little more concentration not to hit them and increases the chance of accidentally closing a program you want open.  That reduces the efficiency a little bit (though I confess being able to middle click to close this way is awesome)

3. Here is where Fitt's Law is debatable.  The dock is a smaller target, but requires less travel time.  In this case the menu is a larger target, but requires more travel time.  It would take trials to determine which is faster.

4. This way REQUIRES 2 hands.  One for alt-tabbing, one for mouse navigation.  This part is not a subtle difference.  The dock can be 100% one hand. Now you can argue the trade off is worth it, but for something I do a LOT, like switching programs, the efficiency of only needing one hand is certainly worthy of consideration.

 

Anyway, I hope that settles why I don't think I made a contradiction on this and I'm not just talking out of my ass here.  What I'm measuring is not actual travel distance, but total time and effort.  In some scenarios, that might look like I'm saying opposite things, but it's probably not contradictory since I could be looking at a different metric than you thought I was.  I'm not looking for subservience from people to agree with what I prefer, but if you're going to say I'm WRONG about something, back it up (like the point on memorization, that WAS a contradiction and I'll own that).

 

 

Now HERE is where I don't think you have a leg to stand on:

 

Quote

You're misreading my comment completely. I'm talking about the effort to actually create the ultimate GUI itself. Not the effort you put into making the video. Most of the "truth" and "proof" presented in the video is also debatable because of it's subjective or vague nature. So they're not as definitive as you think.

No, I didn't think you were talking about the work put in on the video, I took you at face value, saying I'm putting the burden of GUI enlightenment on everyone else except me.  Let's quote what you said:

 

On 6/19/2020 at 6:23 PM, Isaiah said:

The problem here is that you're actually putting the burden of finding GUI "enlightenment" on the shoulders of everyone except yourself. The video could be summarized as "This all sucks and could be way better but I'm not an expert so I want you to show me how to fix it".  No offense but this is the easiest criticism anyone can make about literally anything because it doesn't require any real proof or effort from the person making it.

Whether you meant it or not, your tone is kind of insulting here, man.  If I wasn't taking any of the burden, I would have demonstrated NO solutions to inefficiencies I mentioned, I would have given NO examples of visuals I liked better, I wouldn't have pointed out specifics for more rapid deployment of that Linux pie menu, I wouldn't have listed maybe a dozen programs for doing things like changing icons, changing the taskbar, adding desktop labels, more rapid deployment of shortcuts, showing PAST solutions I had for the start menu, changing the visual appearance, etc.

 

You say I'm misreading, but YOUR WORDS said I put the burden on everyone except myself.  If that were true, I would have criticized everything, and offered NO solutions.  Now were my solutions complete?  Not by a longshot, it's true, I DON'T have all the answers, but I also tried to show enough examples to show that I'm not just imagining this stuff either.  Again, think what you want, but I still don't see how you came to that conclusion.

 

 

You said this:

 

I said this

 

 

That explains HALF of the not-a-contradiction-that-you-think-is-a-contradiction part.  Like in Back to the Future "Where we're going we don't need roads", I'm talking about a scenario where we don't even need TARGETS.  In other words, the travel time becomes irrelevant, because it becomes automatically optimized for the user.

 

If I just have to swipe left for a function to occur, I can swipe a little bit left, or I can make a big swipe left.  They'll both get the job done.  The reason it's FASTER is because I can be sloppy and not even THINK about it.  I don't have to concentrate and hit a target.  That saves me time and brainpower.  Now a short motion will be faster IF I don't spend time thinking about and concentrating on doing it.  The time savings comes from having no target and requiring no precision.  Again, this sort of transcends Fitt's Law.  There's no contradiction on the travel time because it can be as short or as long as you want to be.  All that matters is the total time required for the action, which is going to be more rapid than almost all scenarios of having targets.  I hope this part makes sense.

 

MISSING HALF OF THE EXPLANATION:

Alt / Win Tab in Windows still isn't as efficient as the dock for multiple reasons.  Some of these are subtle, others are not.  I hope you follow here:

 

-I think what I didn't state overtly is I'm assuming you SELECT the appropriate program you want.  So if you have 12 programs open, you're not JUST trying to get their names, you ALSO  want to SELECT the program you want.

 

-First off, Win-tab is not faster.  There's a delay in arranging the squares before the names come up.  Now this is only milliseconds, but I can literally scroll through all my items on the dock during the time I'm waiting on the system.  However, alt-tab is near-instantaneous, so we'll go with that.

 

-This is a subtle inefficiency, but it's still there.  If you have all the names displayed at once for many tasks, this is all over the screen and your eyes may have to hunt around to know where the name of what you're trying to find is.  Using the dock method, the name is always going to appear directly above where the highlight icon is.  Now just so you don't think I'm contradicting later, I WOULD want the screen flooded with info like this if I was browsing through a LOT of files, like hundreds.  But for open tasks, it's slightly faster to have the visuals a little more concentrated.  Again though, this is subtle.  See, you say it's a contradiction that I have to move through the names my way, HOWEVER, since I know exactly where the names are going to appear, it could STILL be faster.  It's not necessarily a contradiction.  It could be on average, it's still faster!  Even though the information is presented instantaneously, my EYES have more travel time now compared to the dock.  I don't have hard evidence on this however, but I hope you at least understand that this isn't a black and white thing.

 

-Next, the inefficiency differs depending on how you're using Alt-Tab.

If it's keyboard only:  You either have to hit tab multiple times until you find your target, then if you overshoot, go through it all over again, OR use the arrow keys to navigate it.  That means that if you only use one hand, this becomes a less efficient method because you're having to concentrate more (or I do, anyway) and hit the tab key the appropriate number of times.  So if you need the 10th program, you need to hit the tab key 10 times.  Alternately, you can use the arrow keys, but now you require TWO hands to accomplish your task and it takes your hand off the mouse, plus navigating via arrows is a little inefficient, it depends on how many programs there are.  So either you're spamming the tab key, or you're having to take your hand off the mouse and it may STILL be less efficient.

 

If it's the mouse and keyboard:

Here's where it honestly depends.  The travel time depends on where your cursor was when you pressed alt-tab, however, the targets are a decent size. However, this still has some inefficiencies:

1. There's still the visual hunting for the name which I mentioned earlier (though I admit this is subtle)

2. You can accidentally close your program because now "x's" are available as you navigate.  This means it takes a little more concentration not to hit them and increases the chance of accidentally closing a program you want open.  That reduces the efficiency a little bit (though I confess being able to middle click to close this way is awesome)

3. Here is where Fitt's Law is debatable.  The dock is a smaller target, but requires less travel time.  In this case the menu is a larger target, but requires more travel time.  It would take trials to determine which is faster.

4. This way REQUIRES 2 hands.  One for alt-tabbing, one for mouse navigation.  This part is not a subtle difference.  The dock can be 100% one hand. Now you can argue the trade off is worth it, but for something I do a LOT, like switching programs, the efficiency of only needing one hand is certainly worthy of consideration.

 

Anyway, I hope that settles why I don't think I made a contradiction on this and I'm not just talking out of my ass here.  I'm not looking for subservience from people to agree with what I prefer, but if you're going to say I'm WRONG about something, back it up (like the point on memorization, that WAS a contradiction and I'll own that).

 

 

Now HERE is where I don't think you have a leg to stand on:

 

Quote

You're misreading my comment completely. I'm talking about the effort to actually create the ultimate GUI itself. Not the effort you put into making the video. Most of the "truth" and "proof" presented in the video is also debatable because of it's subjective or vague nature. So they're not as definitive as you think.

No, I didn't think you were talking about the work put in on the video, I took you at face value, saying I'm putting the burden of GUI enlightenment on everyone else except me.  Let's quote what you said:

 

On 6/19/2020 at 6:23 PM, Isaiah said:

The problem here is that you're actually putting the burden of finding GUI "enlightenment" on the shoulders of everyone except yourself. The video could be summarized as "This all sucks and could be way better but I'm not an expert so I want you to show me how to fix it".  No offense but this is the easiest criticism anyone can make about literally anything because it doesn't require any real proof or effort from the person making it.

Whether you meant it or not, your tone is kind of insulting here, man.  If I wasn't taking any of the burden, I would have demonstrated NO solutions to inefficiencies I mentioned, I would have given NO examples of visuals I liked better, I wouldn't have pointed out specifics for more rapid deployment of that Linux pie menu, I wouldn't have listed maybe a dozen programs for doing things like changing icons, changing the taskbar, adding desktop labels, more rapid deployment of shortcuts, showing PAST solutions I had for the start menu, changing the visual appearance, etc.

 

You say I'm misreading, but YOUR WORDS said I put the burden on everyone except myself.  If that were true, I would have criticized everything, and offered NO solutions.  Now were my solutions complete?  Not by a longshot, it's true, I DON'T have all the answers, but I also tried to show enough examples to show that I'm not just imagining this stuff either.  Again, think what you want, but I still don't see how you came to that conclusion.

 

 

You said this:

 

I said this

 

 

That explains HALF of the not-a-contradiction-that-you-think-is-a-contradiction part.  Like in Back to the Future "Where we're going we don't need roads", I'm talking about a scenario where we don't even need TARGETS.  In other words, the travel time becomes irrelevant, because it becomes automatically optimized for the user.

 

If I just have to swipe left for a function to occur, I can swipe a little bit left, or I can make a big swipe left.  They'll both get the job done.  The reason it's FASTER is because I can be sloppy and not even THINK about it.  I don't have to concentrate and hit a target.  That saves me time and brainpower.  Now a short motion will be faster IF I don't spend time thinking about and concentrating on doing it.  The time savings comes from having no target and requiring no precision.  Again, this sort of transcends Fitt's Law.  There's no contradiction on the travel time because it can be as short or as long as you want to be.  All that matters is the total time required for the action, which is going to be more rapid than almost all scenarios of having targets.  I hope this part makes sense.

 

MISSING HALF OF THE EXPLANATION:

Alt / Win Tab in Windows still isn't as efficient as the dock for multiple reasons.  Some of these are subtle, others are not.  I hope you follow here:

 

-I think what I didn't state overtly is I'm assuming you SELECT the appropriate program you want.  So if you have 12 programs open, you're not JUST trying to get their names, you ALSO  want to SELECT the program you want.

 

-First off, Win-tab is not faster.  There's a delay in arranging the squares before the names come up.  Now this is only milliseconds, but I can literally  scroll through all my items on the dock during the I'm waiting on the system.  However, alt-tab is near-instantaneous, so we'll go with that.

 

-This is a subtle inefficiency, but it's still there.  If you have all the names displayed at once for many tasks, this is all over the screen and your eyes may have to hunt around to know where the name of what you're trying to find is.  Using the dock method, the name is always going to appear directly above where the highlight icon is.  Now just so you don't think I'm contradicting later, I WOULD want the screen flooded with info like this if I was browsing through a LOT of files, like hundreds.  But for open tasks, it's slightly faster to have the visuals a little more concentrated.  Again though, this is subtle.  See, you say it's a contradiction that I have to move through the names my way, HOWEVER, since I know exactly where the names are going to appear, it could STILL be faster.  It's not necessarily a contradiction.  It could be on average, it's still faster!  Even though the information is presented instantaneously, my EYES have more travel time now compared to the dock.  I don't have hard evidence on this however, but I hope you at least understand that this isn't a black and white thing.

 

-Next, the inefficiency differs depending on how you're using Alt-Tab.

If it's keyboard only:  You either have to hit tab multiple times until you find your target, then if you overshoot, go through it all over again, OR use the arrow keys to navigate it.  That means that if you only use one hand, this becomes a less efficient method because you're having to concentrate more (or I do, anyway) and hit the tab key the appropriate number of times.  So if you need the 10th program, you need to hit the tab key 10 times.  Alternately, you can use the arrow keys, but now you require TWO hands to accomplish your task and it takes your hand off the mouse, plus navigating via arrows is a little inefficient, it depends on how many programs there are.  So either you're spamming the tab key, or you're having to take your hand off the mouse and it may STILL be less efficient.

 

If it's the mouse and keyboard:

Here's where it honestly depends.  The travel time depends on where your cursor was when you pressed alt-tab, however, the targets are a decent size. However, this still has some inefficiencies:

1. There's still the visual hunting for the name which I mentioned earlier (though I admit this is subtle)

2. You can accidentally close your program because now "x's" are available as you navigate.  This means it takes a little more concentration not to hit them and increases the chance of accidentally closing a program you want open.  That reduces the efficiency a little bit (though I confess being able to middle click to close this way is awesome)

3. Here is where Fitt's Law is debatable.  The dock is a smaller target, but requires less travel time.  In this case the menu is a larger target, but requires more travel time.  It would take trials to determine which is faster.

4. This way REQUIRES 2 hands.  One for alt-tabbing, one for mouse navigation.  This part is not a subtle difference.  The dock can be 100% one hand. Now you can argue the trade off is worth it, but for something I do a LOT, like switching programs, the efficiency of only needing one hand is certainly worthy of consideration.

 

Anyway, I hope that settles why I don't think I made a contradiction on this and I'm not just talking out of my ass here.  I'm not looking for subservience from people to agree with what I prefer, but if you're going to say I'm WRONG about something, back it up (like the point on memorization, that WAS a contradiction and I'll own that).

 

 

Now HERE is where I don't think you have a leg to stand on:

 

Quote

You're misreading my comment completely. I'm talking about the effort to actually create the ultimate GUI itself. Not the effort you put into making the video. Most of the "truth" and "proof" presented in the video is also debatable because of it's subjective or vague nature. So they're not as definitive as you think.

No, I didn't think you were talking about the work put in on the video, I took you at face value, saying I'm putting the burden of GUI enlightenment on everyone else except me.  Let's quote what you said:

 

On 6/19/2020 at 6:23 PM, Isaiah said:

The problem here is that you're actually putting the burden of finding GUI "enlightenment" on the shoulders of everyone except yourself. The video could be summarized as "This all sucks and could be way better but I'm not an expert so I want you to show me how to fix it".  No offense but this is the easiest criticism anyone can make about literally anything because it doesn't require any real proof or effort from the person making it.

Whether you meant it or not, your tone is kind of insulting here, man.  If I wasn't taking any of the burden, I would have demonstrated NO solutions to inefficiencies I mentioned, I would have given NO examples of visuals I liked better, I wouldn't have pointed out specifics for more rapid deployment of that Linux pie menu, I wouldn't have listed maybe a dozen programs for doing things like changing icons, changing the taskbar, adding desktop labels, more rapid deployment of shortcuts, showing PAST solutions I had for the start menu, changing the visual appearance, etc.

 

You say I'm misreading, but YOUR WORDS said I put the burden on everyone except myself.  If that were true, I would have criticized everything, and offered NO solutions.  Now were my solutions complete?  Not by a longshot, it's true, I DON'T have all the answers, but I also tried to show enough examples to show that I'm not just imagining this stuff either.  Again, think what you want, but I still don't see how you came to that conclusion.