There's a new farm of these a few miles from where I grew up.

As for keeping it newb friendly -- the keystrokes and stuff aren't likely going to be used by anyone but power users

-allen (February 03, 2006, 08:00 AM)

Here, i don't agree with you. I think we should try to fins a solution that is both suitable to power-users as much as intuitive, so as someone new to farr can see it's power immediatelly.

-jgpaiva (February 03, 2006, 08:42 AM)

I don't disagree with you on this point -- I absolutely agree that it should be intuitive regardless of experience level.  All I'm saying is no matter how much brainstorming you do to have optimized keyboard shortcuts, keyboard shortcuts are not par for the course for less experienced computer users.  My point was that there should be an alternate method or methods of accessing all this functionality without expecting a point-click user to use the keyboard.

As it is often descibred, most people when trying to use a software, only evalute it in the first use, which means that these kind of functions should be as easy as possible, but also providing as much flexibility as possible.

-jgpaiva (February 03, 2006, 08:42 AM)

Right, which is precisely my point.  There needs to be a quick, easy way to access the features from the start -- if a user has to spend the beginning of their trial of the software learning a bunch of proprietary keystrokes, they're going to throw in the towel.  Give them things to click on, and display the shortcuts next to the menu items or in tooltips and they'll have their GUI interface and the shortcuts will be right there for them to learn when they're ready.  It's not difficult to hit "enter" after typing a website, but users want a "go" button, you know?

I'm a pack rat -- losing my e-mail archive was far more traumatic than the loss of the computer itself, or the DVD's, or anything else for that matter . . . it was a growing experience, I had to learn to let go :-)

-- it took most of the night to download all my gmail messages into The Bat!.  As it would turn out, I had almost 50,000 -- I have a nice, full mailbase on TB now :)