[openbeos] Re: Calculator still needed?
- From: "Waldemar Kornewald" <wkornewald@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:34:30 +0200
Hi Stephan,
On 10/7/06, Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx> wrote:
You and others keep saying this, but I'm not convinced this is true. How do
you know that you need to use the keyboard to enter something into a text
control? How do you know that you can navigate the mouse cursor with the
mouse and click stuff?
I guess that this is the actual problem most of us had, but didn't name:
I've seen many users who didn't intuitively know the respective keys
for multiplication and division. If you're lucky and your computer has
a numeric keypad this might be less of a problem (although it still
seemed to be non-obvious), but most notebooks don't have it.
We could work around this by only removing the number keys, but
keeping +,-,*,/. The space we win could be used for other non-obvious
functions (^, sqrt, e, pi, ln(), sin(), etc.).
It must be really obvious that the app is a calculator and how to use
it. Maybe that simple icon next to the text field is sufficient.
Often, if users have to think about how to use something they rather
switch to an alternative and that wouldn't help anyone. If you get
greeted with just a text field and nothing more it might be a little
bit too minimalistic.
Input with a touch-screen is probably less of an issue because you can
use an on-screen keyboard.
The advantage of removing those number keys would be that users become
more effective because we make them use the keyboard instead of the
mouse. I think as long as we keep * and / and probably also + and - it
could work. We should probably give it a try.
Now that we talk about usability:
The calculator displays error messages as normal text, so before you
can type in something new you must delete the text or press "up" to
get to the previous calculation. It would be much better if the error
message appeared as a tooltip or as a red note below the input field,
so you can fix the error directly (and the cursor should immediately
jump to the problem, if possible).
Another issue is that after DeskCalc auto-enabled numlock it doesn't
disable it when the window is inactive or closed. I'm not even sure if
it's a good idea to have auto-numlock. On notebooks these keys overlap
with the normal keyboard (on mine you'd have problems finding out why
"0" changed its meaning to "/"). On full-size keyboards numlock should
better be enabled globally. Am I missing something?
We could also get rid of the last configuration option:
Is audio-feedbak really necessary? Do you have such a silent and soft
keyboard that you don't notice it when you press a key? :)
Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald
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