[olpc-help] UI rough spot: or I just don't get it?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

dpbsmith wrote:
> OK, I've been playing with the XO for about a week. I'm not a member of its target audience, of course, but there are things which I just don't "get" about the Sugar UI. 
> 
> I find the absence of anything like a visible file system troubling. I take it the Journal is supposed to serve that function, and I assume that you're not expected to be working on more than a dozen or so things, but even so... the Journal seems like a strange mix, I find it hard to scroll back and find the things I want to continue working on. 
> 
> I find it puzzling that there's no obvious way to select multiple Journal entries to delete them as a group.
> 
> I find the "activity-open-door-icon-'keep'" tapdance to be complicated and distracting (compare to "file... save..." in Mac/Windows-like GUIs).
> 
> I still have troubles with "keep" in the browser. It frequently tells me that "keep" failed and doesn't tell me why. I'm completely baffled as to when I am actually saving content (e.g. a downloaded file) and when I am just saving a URL (which can't be re-opened if I'm not on a WiFi network).
> 
> If someone can explain these to me conceptually from the point of view of a kid, I'd appreciate it.

Actually, there are lengthy discussions on the UI and why it's the way
it is on the wiki ... search for "Human Interface Guidelines". What I've
found is, thinking as an "adult", that it's more similar to the UI of a
PDA, the high-end Texas Instruments calculators, or the old HP100-LX,
than it is to a Windows PC, a Mac or any of the "major" Linux desktops
(Gnome, XFCE, KDE or some of the more advanced window managers.)

The other thing to remember is that all currently open activities must
fit into RAM and RAM is only 256 MB. As a result, you wouldn't normally
do a lot of task switching on an XO. But you did trigger an interesting
point in my mind, which is, "What kind of UI will be on the computers
that the generation of XO-trained children grow up to use?"
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