20120407/Raskin vs Engelbart: Difference between revisions

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DavidM

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-[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart Douglas Englebart] is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart#Career_and_accomplishments profound contributor] to technology, envisioning and creating early models of many of the most important features of modern computing decades before they became mainstream. In my interpretation of his approach, particularly after reading the excellent book [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said What the Dormouse Said], is that we should treat the computer as a computing device, that offers re-usable facilities across all applications. In an exaggerated Englebart toaster application, there'd be a menu option for "Operations" (common to all similar in all applications) with an option to "Pop toast." The disadvantage is, you have to learn the common facilities.<br class="cleared" />
+[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart Douglas Engelbart] is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart#Career_and_accomplishments profound contributor] to technology, envisioning and creating early models of many of the most important features of modern computing decades before they became mainstream. In my interpretation of his approach, particularly after reading the excellent book [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said What the Dormouse Said], is that we should treat the computer as a computing device, that offers re-usable facilities across all applications. In an exaggerated Engelbart toaster application, there'd be a menu option for "Operations" (common to all similar in all applications) with an option to "Pop toast." The disadvantage is, you have to learn the common facilities.<br class="cleared" />
-If there were camps (no doubt these ideas are complementary, particularly when their developed features become common), I'd be soundly in the Englebart camp. If I'm spending so much time with it, I want my computer to be a computer, I want to learn how to consistently work with content, I want an expanding, consistent toolset that eventually offers me meta capabilities.
+If there were camps (no doubt these ideas are complementary, particularly when their developed features become common), I'd be soundly in the Engelbart camp. If I'm spending so much time with it, I want my computer to be a computer, I want to learn how to consistently work with content, I want an expanding, consistent toolset that eventually offers me meta capabilities.
 A good example of Raskin's approach is the iPhone. It's designed to be as simple as possible, with just one button (aside from volume). Android, on the other hand, has (with some current changes), four buttons. A home button (like the iPhone), a menu button, which consistently accesses the app's functions, a back button, used for navigation in or between apps, and a search button. Granted, these buttons don't apply for every type of app, but they make apps more obvious for me, and iPhone has had to come up with some really, really inobvious workarounds (like having to double-click the button, hah hah).
-This is also reflected in current operating environment design. For a while, we had a kind of plateau in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing) WIMP] interfaces. Windows, Mac, Unix/Linux graphical interfaces all pretty much worked the same way, with the mouse, menus, toolbars, copy and paste all ready functions, very much, in my mind, in the Englebart model. Now, operating systems are struggling to merge or subsume their operation with "the touchscreen way." The result, currently, to my mind, is mess. Word, Firefox and Chrome pretty much have entirely reinvented their interfaces several times, each time it's a new puzzle game to figure out where things are. Fine for savvy people with an interest in constantly figuring things out, but leaving many other people out.
+This is also reflected in current operating environment design. For a while, we had a kind of plateau in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing) WIMP] interfaces. Windows, Mac, Unix/Linux graphical interfaces all pretty much worked the same way, with the mouse, menus, toolbars, copy and paste all ready functions, very much, in my mind, in the Engelbart model. Now, operating systems are struggling to merge or subsume their operation with "the touchscreen way." The result, currently, to my mind, is mess. Word, Firefox and Chrome pretty much have entirely reinvented their interfaces several times, each time it's a new puzzle game to figure out where things are. Fine for savvy people with an interest in constantly figuring things out, but leaving many other people out.
 Another example is Wikipedia (and Mediawiki sites generally) vs. the typical Web 2.0 website. Wikipedia has a standard menu set that makes many people groan, because they never use "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges recent changes]," (neat to see what's going on) "[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebook&action=history history]" (pretty essential to understand the progression and current state of a page), or "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Facebook talk]," where you can see the formulations, controversies, and subjective content about a topic, as well as the personalities behind their development.