Why aren't things like turning off Smart Quotes just obvious?
Because you have a limited amount of screen space. Seriously.
This is tangential to the main thrust of the quote, which is just demonstrating the duality of perceptions that are out there. But it came to me while reading that last sentence. Turning off Smart Quotes can't be obvious, because it might mean that creating a subscript or superscript would not be obvious, or changing font size, or style, or paragraph grouping, or... Just speaking for Word, I think they do put most of the options under as few layers of obscurity as possible (however, don't ask me what I think about their image placement handling if you don't want to hear a loud rant [1]). But it's supposed to be an incredibly functional program, with options crammed tight everywhere. There has to be some organization, and thus there has to be some layering.
I seriously think that any UI designer for programs like that has reached the bottleneck of screen space some time ago.
...You know, I think you just inspired an entry.
[1] Although it'll mostly concern their choices of default values in that case.
(no subject)
Because you have a limited amount of screen space. Seriously.
This is tangential to the main thrust of the quote, which is just demonstrating the duality of perceptions that are out there. But it came to me while reading that last sentence. Turning off Smart Quotes can't be obvious, because it might mean that creating a subscript or superscript would not be obvious, or changing font size, or style, or paragraph grouping, or... Just speaking for Word, I think they do put most of the options under as few layers of obscurity as possible (however, don't ask me what I think about their image placement handling if you don't want to hear a loud rant [1]). But it's supposed to be an incredibly functional program, with options crammed tight everywhere. There has to be some organization, and thus there has to be some layering.
I seriously think that any UI designer for programs like that has reached the bottleneck of screen space some time ago.
...You know, I think you just inspired an entry.
[1] Although it'll mostly concern their choices of default values in that case.