Re: GUI necessary?

["Roger Pence" <rp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eric--

>     2) The relative effectiveness of the UI depends solely on the
>     design of the app. I'm happy that you like quicken and it's UI, but
>     in most cases, for standard data entry tasks, the green screen
>     rules. Users don't need as much training, less chance of technical
>     problems, more reliability, etc.

I strongly disagree that the green screen rules. Like it or not, you simply
can't sell a green-screen app for the AS/400 today. I recently heard AS/400
GM Tom Jarosh say that IBM has given up trying to convert the 24K+ old-time
applications that currently exist for the AS/400 to modern equivalents.
IBM's current vision is to look forward, not backward, at a new suite of
"modern" (ie, graphical) applications.

If you want to stay alive in this industry, you have to look forward.

I am not advocating that PCs replace dumb terminals on shop floors. That
wasn't the statement with which I took exception. I took exception to the
statement that there "were very few  instances where a GUI is necessary."
Certainly, there are places for types of data entry devices.

Would the Web have ever taken off without a graphical browser? No.
Should all businesses unconditionally replace shop floor dumb terminals with
PCs. No.
Will Linux will never be anything more than a tinkerer's toy until it
acquires a full-blown, well-done user interface. No.

There aren't absolute answers to any of this stuff. It is just too narrow in
today's world to insist that GUI is for sissies and green screens rule.
Well-crafted, alternative interfaces have not only made substantial inroads
into character-based user interfaces, they have replaced it. There is an
entire generation of users, many of whom now are decision makers, that think
character-based user interfaces belong on cave walls. Fight it if you want
to, but the green-screen is dead.

I'll be you the ice-cold beverage of your choice that in five years, DDS,
its one million keywords, and its block mode model will be as silly a notion
then as a Pauly Shore movie is today.

rp



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