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Abominations of the Modern User Interface

Abominations of the modern user interface:

1) Saving and opening files - The very basic user action "accessing my data" is always obscured by the opening and saving process. This introduces

• bizarre interface terminology - "save" "open" "revert" "save as" have absolutely nothing to do with any user's task at hand

• cryptic interface syntax - "work on my report" translates to "Menu->Office->Writer->File->Open->Documents->My Report"

• difficult interface traps - saving over data, forgetting where data is saved, keeping track of separate files for revisions

• confusion about multiple copies of data exposed to users - on disk (saved), resident in memory (open), copies on disk (rescued)

2) Icons and labels - Represent rich, unique information structures with generic, coarse representations making identification extremely difficult.

3) Unending discussions about what to include in menus, which menus to have, what to call menu items, how to make icons more expressive, less confusing

4) Not knowing what the heck something is/does (icons on my panel)

5) Not being able to edit text. Having two modes: text is an object to be dragged, text is text to be edited.

6) The fact that there is no such thing as "interface reuse"

7) Desktop and Home Folder are hideous constructs

8) Sorting, which is a poor man's incremental search. (Except maybe by date.)

9) Non-reversable actions

10) No visual continuity WRT: I can drag this, I can depress this, I can select this.

• No visual indication of: what happens when I click this, what happens when I click and drag?