In the frenzy of application development, sometimes it's easy to forget that the people who would use those applications may not have such a fine appreciation for the intricacies of C++ or Java or whatever.
Joel Spolsky rags on a new Mac browser that pops up a box to tell a user that a URL he's bookmarked has changed and then asks if he wants to re-set the bookmark to the new URL:
Joel on Software - Friday, June 20, 2003
"Unnecessary UIs like this that pop up to brag about a cool feature the developer implemented are a little bit obnoxious. Too many software developers just can't bring themselves to implement completely invisible features. They need to show off about what a great feature they just implemented, even at the cost of confusing people."
Meanwhile, Jon Udell provides some summaries of that RSS controversy and says all of it won't mean a thing "until the non-emacs-using civilians -- the people who are expected to create and gather and process this content whose representation we all (myself included) find so fascinating -- are put front and center."
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