[kwlug-disc] user and ui

[Doug Moen]

The best CLI I ever used (for discoverability) is the Cisco IOS CLI used on Cisco routers.

This CLI has an excellent integrated help and command completion system.
You can get help on a CLI argument when you are part way through typing a command.
The entire CLI is organized as a tree, so even if you know nothing, you can still type '?' and see all of the top level names in the command tree, guess which top level name corresponds to what you are trying to do, and continue down the hierarchy, like exploring a menu bar in a GUI.

There's nothing about a GUI that makes it inherently better for discoverability, and the trend for the last decade or so has been "clean", "modern", "flat" visual design that hides UI cues (like, where is the scroll bar? where are the clickable buttons?). It's just that back in the 1980's, the Unix shell did not have a discoverable UI, and the Mac GUI did have a discoverable UI, and the pace of innovation is slow.

Doug.

On Mon, Mar 22, 2021, at 12:04 PM, Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc wrote:
> The following is an observation about UI approaches. What do you think? 
> Comments and other stories are appreciated.
> 
> CLI is good, even superb when user either knows what commands to utter, 
> or knows what questions to ask shell, so that it leads you toward 
> correct action (assuming shell is capable of answering).
> 
> GUI is the only option for those users who don't know what questions to 
> ask. And designer has to lead user with clues. Clues are aided by common 
> metaphors, common experience.
> 
> lxc and docker are examples of CLI that was better at leading me to 
> correct commands. Before that I wasn't touching CLI much. And in what I 
> do now, I look and long for lxc/docker style of leading me, the user. 
> Let's note that aforementioned stylistic approach in lxc/docker could've 
> existed before, and I also don't want to say that this is the best, 
> example is simply my anecdotal case of experience in cli.
> 
> 
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