Interesting article - with which I wholly agree. And I'm always anxious to hear ideas on user interfaces. The I in QFIT stands for Interface.
Interesting article - with which I wholly agree. And I'm always anxious to hear ideas on user interfaces. The I in QFIT stands for Interface.
> Interesting article - with which I wholly agree. And
> I'm always anxious to hear ideas on user interfaces.
I agree with the principles but I don't think the example cited in that excerpt was a good one. That is more a case of "Why Hardware Sucks" (i.e. non-volatile memory is slow and/or expensive) than "Why Software Sucks".
I don't understand why most programmers can't at least copy good interface designs from other software. I might not have that money that Microsoft has to poor into usability research but I can easily benefit from it by looking at the Microsoft Office user interface and how it has changed over the years. I think this is not because these programmers don't realise that their user interface is bad but because they don't care. With so much quality free software available these days I think that will improve.
> The I in QFIT stands for Interface.
Stay tuned... in upcoming posts Norm reveals what the Q, F and T stand for.
Programmers don't understand how software is used. When I was at Citibank, they decided to go into the travel business bigtime. So, they had to write software for travel agents. They did this by setting up a small, real travel agency in the middle of a technology office with real travel agents. Then, they watched them. An expensive way to design software - but far more likely to result in software that can be used by travel agents then used by programmers.
I can easily benefit from it by looking at the Microsoft Office user interface and how it has changed over the years
Yes, and MS pushes this concept. But, in a somewhat sleazy manner. MS creates a set of GUI standards and will allow you to use the Windows logo if you follow them. A good idea in principle. But, what MS doesn't tell you is that while you are spending money changing your applications to follow the Windows logo standards; MS is busily changing all their apps to follow a different set of unannounced standards. Then when you finish and announce your products; MS will finish their new changes, announce their new products with an interface that obsoletes yours, and demands that you now change your interfaces to meet the new 'standard,' while secretly changing their interfaces to yet a new standard. So, everyone is constantly adapting to new standards while always staying a step behind.
> Interesting article - with which I wholly agree. And
> I'm always anxious to hear ideas on user interfaces.
> The I in QFIT stands for Interface.
Sorry, I just came in on this (after several months of not reading this forum), but what is the article you refer to?
I'm a software engineer. I downloaded a trial of CVBJ a few months ago and played with it a little. I think it's a GREAT program. I assume it was a one-man effort over the course of many years?
I wonder if you would care to say anything about the software engineering aspects? for example -
What programming language(s) did you use?
How is the software organized?
How many hours of effort? When did you start?
What GUI toolkit?
How many lines of code?
Any other tools, packages, etc. you used in development?
Etc, etc - anything you care to say about the engineering and development would be of interest to me.
Thanks, Gard
> What programming language(s) did you use?
VB6
> How is the software organized?
CVBJ has a very boring organization as I had no idea it would grow to its current size when I started. CVData is a more modern architecture as I knew where I was going at the start. It contains the main user interface program and five simulation engines each packaged in a separate DLL. Data is communicated from the engines to the main program via object properties. CVBJ is simply a huge, monolithic beast.
> How many hours of effort? When did you start?
No idea. 14 years ago.
> What GUI toolkit?
VB6 plus a large number of third party OCXs for the charts, grids, tabs, folders, menus, gauges, popups, etc. For example, ActBar, VSFlex, FarPont ButtonMaker, GMS, Infragistics AcitveTreeView, First Impression. Microsoft Agent is used to control the animated aide and the graphics were created under consignment by a French graphics company.
> How many lines of code?
No idea. CV alone contains 126 modules with 1,503 procedures and 42 functions. Many procedures had to be split as I hit the VB6 limits in size.
> Any other tools, packages, etc. you used in
> development?
MS Access, EllTech Compression, various graphics programs, thousands of photos and some tools I built.
> Etc, etc - anything you care to say about the
> engineering and development would be of interest to
> me.
When I started this project, PCs had one megabyte of RAM and software was distributed on floppies. So a major concern was compactness. Now that this concern is gone; the major concerns are ease of modification and ease of debugging. CVData/CVCX were built with these concerns in mind and are a delight to maintain. The difference in effort required is enormous.
norm
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