Don't Be Over-Redundant

It’s great to have a mouse way to do something (when I don’t want to take my hand off the mouse), and a keyboard way to do the same thing (when i don’t want to take my hands off the keyboard).

But I don’t need 3 or 4 mouse ways to do it, and 3 or 4 keyboard ways to do it. That’s over-redundant. That produces cluttered, overwhelming, resource-heavy apps, like Microsoft Word.

Keep the system as light and uncluttered as possible, by having only ONE way to do something with the mouse, and only ONE way to do the same thing with the keyboard.

Other benefits:
* Gives users less to learn.
* Smaller code-base to trouble-shoot, upgrade, etc.

Examples?

I think he means something like how (in the Evo Resource Tree) you can right-click on the resource’s name to get the context menu, or click on the little icon next to the item, or open the item and use the menu at the top (am I forgetting something here?) and that’s not even extJS, which has a bazillion ways to do anything built-in; no need to code for them!

Also: please correct me if I’m wrong, as I don’t program, but using OOP, isn’t each instance applying the same set of rules, or class, or object? When I click the button ’Create Resource Here’, whether I click it from the right click menu or click it from the top, doesn’t it use the same code to actually process the request? Doesn’t seem like redundancy then, more like convenience and better usability.

More != better

True, but a true-er statement would be more does not necessarily mean better. I mean, sometimes I may want to click the button for a new resource, as an example, and sometimes I may want to right click and then create a resource there instead of clicking on the resource and then clicking on the create resource button up top. And although I would know to right click, a typical user would very likely not know to right click and would be confused about the lack of options.

I don’t know MODx well enough yet to give examples, I’ve only read on some of the tutorials "there are usually several ways to accomplish the same thing."

Which brings to mind Microsoft Word 2007, which has at least 4 ways to copy:
-right-click
-control-c
-toolbar button
-edit menu

The philosophy is that different people prefer different methods at different times. Well, I teach Word, and average Joe users can usually only remember one way, they only need one way. I think it does not benefit most users, and makes for a more cluttered interface. 3 of the above ways all use the mouse. I think 1 is enough.

So when I read that MODx has more than one way to do the same thing, then I worry that, if that’s part of the design philosophy of MODx going forward, that we will see more Microsoft-style bloat in MODx.

But as was pointed out, they all trigger the same code, so maybe it’s fine. But worth thinking about.

Quote from: johnywhy at May 04, 2011, 07:35 PM

But as was pointed out, they all trigger the same code, so maybe it’s fine. But worth thinking about.

I’m not a programmer, I could be wrong about that.

Quote from: johnywhy at May 04, 2011, 07:31 PM

I don’t know MODx well enough yet to give examples, I’ve only read on some of the tutorials "there are usually several ways to accomplish the same thing."

Which brings to mind Microsoft Word 2007, which has at least 4 ways to copy:
-right-click
-control-c
-toolbar button
-edit menu

Bringing user-interface examples from Microsoft, IMO, is pointless. Although, I’ll point out that most of those make sense, from an app design perspective.
-right click - this is an often used tool, and should be readily available via mouse
-control-c - necessary for keyboard users, but alas, most computer users are clueless about such things as shortcuts and never use them
-toolbar button - necessary for people that don’t really know computers, that won’t know to look in the edit menu, in the right click menu, or to use the keyboard shortcut
-edit menu - this makes sense, I think, and in any case, how would anyone ever learn what the shortcut is the first time without the button being in the edit menu?

Quote from: johnywhy at May 04, 2011, 07:31 PM

The philosophy is that different people prefer different methods at different times. Well, I teach Word, and average Joe users can usually only remember one way, they only need one way. I think it does not benefit most users, and makes for a more cluttered interface. 3 of the above ways all use the mouse. I think 1 is enough.

To illustrate, which of the above ways would you limit it to? Only in the right click menu? This is something used a lot. Why isn’t it in the toolbar? Only in the toolbar? I use this a lot - why should I bring my mouse all the way up to the toolbar after selecting the text to copy it? Only in the edit menu? Why not the toolbar, where it is more accessible? Why not the right click menu, where my mouse has less room to travel to click it?

Quote from: johnywhy at May 04, 2011, 07:31 PM

So when I read that MODx has more than one way to do the same thing, then I worry that, if that’s part of the design philosophy of MODx going forward, that we will see more Microsoft-style bloat in MODx.

I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding here. So far as I know, when people speak of that, they are referring to the many ways to organize information and accomplish tasks using the MODX infrastructure.

For instance, if I have some pages that have a right sidebar, some with a left sidebar, and some that have no sidebar, I could accomplish the build of this site in many different ways:
1. I could make 3 different templates.
2. I could use one template and make use one of my standard TVs (such as link_attributes) as a class name, and then the two columns can be named arbitrarily, and the CSS can structure the columns differently depending on the outer class name and the children.
3. I could make 1 template that uses a conditional statement, and have a dropdown TV that selects left, right or none.
4. There are additional ways to accomplish this.

Basically, anything that you decide you want to do, there is usually (maybe always?) more than one way to accomplish it. This isn’t a matter of redundancy; this is one of the best things about MODX - the freedom to choose your path, to go according to your workflow and not the workflow of the CMS designers.

goonz, thanks, and glad i misunderstood!

ever-impressed with the MODxtended family of users/developers/teachers!