And regarding "focus"

Post #234,203 by ubernostrum 11/15/05 5:26:12 AM Reply	And regarding "focus" I don't think a file manager is a great example here, because it's expected to be something of a jack of all trades. But right now one of my favorite applications is [link\|http://basecamphq.com/\|Basecamp], a web-based project-management system with an almost absurdly small number of configuration options. The developers started with a single thesis: project management is not about graphs or charts or four levels of committees signing off before something can go forward. It's about communication. So they built an application which made communication simple and easy, and kept things tightly focused. At first they only used it in-house for their web-design clients, but then they began marketing it as a service and now are making boatloads of money from it. And its focus hasn't hindered use one bit -- plenty of web designers use it for project managemnet, yes, but it turned out that "project management" is a pretty broad thing, and now they've got customers using it for everything from major corporate processes to wedding planning. \r\n\r\n So "focus" doesn't mean "define exactly the set of things users will be allowed to do, and forbid all other uses". --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #234,228 by admin 11/15/05 10:18:33 AM Reply	Then explain how configurability causes lack of focus. And if you can't be arsed to address all of the points I made, then I think I'm done. I make it a habit not to converse with people who drag threads off by nitpicking a few things (cf. Bryce). Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #234,305 by ubernostrum 11/15/05 4:24:46 PM Reply	Again. Configurability, in and of itself, is not an evil, should not be unilaterally abolished, does not cause applications to lose their focus, does not cause global warming, and did not shoot JFK. And I don't care who or what they are, I will flame the everliving hell out of the next person who claims I said it does. \r\n\r\n TOO MUCH configurability, and POORLY-ORGANIZED and POORLY-THOUGHT-OUT configurability, on the other hand, have all sorts of negative impacts on an application. \r\n\r\n With regards to focus, over-configurability has a nasty way of causing feature creep; "well, we want people to configure this, so we should offer a way to configure that and those as well, and that means we need to support option X so we'll have to refactor foo..." \r\n\r\n And in terms of user focus, it also has a nasty habit of distracting attention from what the user is actually trying to do; there are so many applications out there which immediately pop up configuration dialogs first thing after launching, when so many of them don't actually need to do that, and would run just fine for most users with a sensibly-chosen set of defaults. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #234,312 by hnick 11/15/05 4:40:59 PM Reply	You sure about the JFK bit? I got doubts...

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