Re: Email question

by Kid Stevens <kstevens89(at)comcast.net>

 Date:  Fri, 09 Aug 2002 21:30:30 -0600
 To:  hwg-techniques(at)mail.hwg.org
 References:  cox yahoo cox2 oldforgefd
  todo: View Thread, Original
Whether you believe this or not the one and only Human Interface 
Guidelines written in the 80s and published by Addison Press went out 
at over 12 million copies sold.  Yes it was written with the words; 
Apple and Macintosh on it, but it turned into the guide book for Sun, 
NEC, Sony, IBM, Microsoft, Unisys, the Mozaic development team, 
Netscape, QUALCOMM, AOL I guess that is enough.

It defines the way programmers and hardware designers treat the Human race.

Yes it has been copied into subsets and used under other names.

I interpreted that original message as meaning an email arrives on 
your computer and it auto opens to try and force you to read text.

There are hundreds of these little "I like this site" that email to 
the other person.  Instead of perusing the web to look at this other 
code for a simple answer.

  Civilians had the web after 1991, I used text web when I was in the 
military in 1978 as an experiment between us Engineer Technicians and 
the Scientists for information transfer.

Besides as you come back about mailto: there was nothing about mailto 
or "I like this site" emails mentioned in the original e-mail.  Those 
I understand.

At 4:09 PM -0700 8/9/02, Al Sessions wrote:
>At 12:09 PM 8/9/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>>Totally in violation of the Human Interface Guidelines.
>>
>>Please is there not enough stuff popping up in our faces these days.
>
>Wouldn't the act of clicking on an email link open the users mailer 
>of choice? I fail to see how adding some text to an already opened 
>window aggravates the issue... if your advocating *not* opening an 
>email client at all you have certainly picked a difficult row to hoe.
>
>>If the name HIG does not bring up any thoughts look at modern TV, 
>>VCRs and other consumer goods and look how much easier they are to 
>>set up compared to old.  The HIG covers human machine interaction 
>>and was published in 1988.  The HIG recommends strongly that items 
>>do not spring up in a users face without complete foreknowledge.
>
>I imagine that clicking on a mailto: link would provide some sort of 
>foreknowledge, the other option would be to force the user to fill 
>out a form and in that case the subsequent redirect would be a new 
>item. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
>
>I'm also curious about your HIG reference. A cursory Goggle search 
>turns up a Java HIG, a Mac HIG, a GNOME HIG, and a slew of others. 
>Which one are you referring to and why is it any more definitive 
>than another?
>
>I'm also unclear on the relevance of a pre WWW (CERN and Berners-Lee 
>didn't cook it up until 1991) guideline 15 years later. While 
>possibly applicable to GUI's most of todays users are fully 
>conversant with a simple mailto, we're not talking anything new or 
>earth shattering here.
>
>I would be far more concerned about guidelines and standards 
>relevant to the web than esoteric programmatic issues.
>
>-----------------------------------------
>Al Sessions
>al(at)oldforgefd.org
>http://www.fultonchaindesign.com/mt (personal weblog)


-- 
Sincerely,
Kid Stevens

"Communication in one direction is just a lecture,  a telling of words,
a one way street, true communication is a two way street with
a speaker and a respondent at each end"
-Kid Stevens

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