"Frank Stearns" wrote in message
acquisition...
"William Sommerwerck" writes:

I used it for a while about 15 years ago, in its first Windows incarnation.
It had the most-poorly designed dialog boxes for any piece of software
I have ever used.

Not sure what you were seeing. The UI was fairly consistent among the
various platforms, though because of the underlying dictates of the
Windows UI resources sometimes things were a bit squirrely.

They were simply lousy -- poor layout, poor of choice what a particular dialog
box contained, etc. Whoever designed them apparently had no experience with or
understanding of DTP.


In general FM dialogs could get confusing because they are very dense --
lots of stuff you can do. While a little off-putting at first, once you got
used to this you appreciate having so much power close at hand.

I didn't. A dialog box should contain a closely related set of functions.


Contrast to Interleaf (competitor of the day) when most things were 3-4 menu
pulls down with few or no keyboard shortcuts, and lots of clicking through
"single
purpose" dialogs -- THAT was crazy-making if you wanted any speed with the
UI.

Neither Ventura nor PageMaker were like that. Word isn't like that.


I hope it's gotten better.

Yes and no; YMMV. While the new UIs since FM9 are more "contemporary,"
many of us who have used FM for 20+ years don't like the new UI dictates
(I still use 10 year old FM7 for most of my daily doc needs, as do many
folks).
As with many applications these days, some UI designers think they know
best and force you into something that's far less efficient.

I'll take clarity over efficiency any day.


It's unsettling how often UI folks don't actually use the product they're
working
on -- they just do what seems pretty with little understanding of the work
flows.

This is critical. No one should be allowed to design a product who does not
use it.


Last fall, at Adobe's invitation, I spent 90 minutes on the phone with the
new UI
guy for FM pleading with him to keep certain UI needs and standards in mind.
Mostly, doc professionals were sick of "cute" and just wanted the damn UI to
not
get in their way. I think he got the message, and I was not the only one
making
the same complaints. We shall see what comes along...

What is "cute"?