Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 00:04:30 +1000 From: "Andrew Hannam" <hannama@fan.net.au> To: "Andrzej Bialecki" <abial@nask.pl> Cc: <owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG>, "FreeBSDSmall" <freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Command-line i/f (Re: PicoBSD) Message-ID: <000501bdf069$12346d60$0104010a@andrewh.famzon.com.au> In-Reply-To: <000401bdf065$da48a900$0104010a@andrewh.famzon.com.au>
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> > I personally am a big hater of WWW config interfaces... but that's just > > me. IMHO it's useful mostly for marketing hype and (maybe) for > people who > > are complete newbies, but for those who want to get the job done it just > > stands in the way... OTOH, perhaps I had just a bad experience > - that one > > I tried to use was completely useless, because I could do the same job > > much quicker using command-line i/f with completion... > > I agree they can be bad, and I share your love of the command > line. However, > a well designed set of pages can do the job and be much easier to use for > newbie's or those without the time to study manuals. This > probably includes > most people and applications for this type of device other than > (as they are > sometimes called in my country) "propeller-heads" such as me (and you). [Opinion] WWW is just another GUI, although a cheap one from the server point of view. Like all GUI's you can design good and bad applications. The point with html is that by nature you tend to end up with bad interfaces unless you do the design work first. Who these days has time to do anything other than a quick and dirty implementation? Only the marketing people who see it like any other form of trend marketing. This explains the many bad interfaces we see. They are either bad from being "quick and dirty" or bad from being too glossy with limited functionality. Point is... design an interface properly in html and it should be as good as any other GUI implementation. The same applies to command lines. If you design badly you get a bad result (hence the comments earlier in this group about how bad Cisco IOS is. Command line completion does a lot to "rescue" the useability of Cisco IOS). To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message
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