Star The Command Line - The Best Newbie Interface?
Linked by Richard Wareham on Mon 8th Mar 2004 20:49 UTC
Graphics, User Interfaces This essay describes the surprising results of a brief trial with a group of new computer users about the relative ease of the command line interface versus the GUIs now omnipresent in computer interfaces. It comes from practical experience I have of teaching computing to complete beginners or newbies as computer power-users often term them.
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re:bact
by Kady Mae on Tue 9th Mar 2004 00:13 UTC

bact sez:

"visitor: how to use this?

me: oh, very easy. you just 'click' on this button.

visitor: 'click' ?

me: (realized that he never use computer or GUI before)
i mean you use a mouse, here is a mouse.

[snip]"

ROFL. Have had the same experience here at work. It happens less and less, but it still happens. (And usually with patrons who ask where the card catalog is ... "Uh, well then, how do I look up a book?")

But even back when we had a CLI based interface to the catalog, with a menu of commands at the bottom of the screen, computer noobies still needed hand holding to get through navigation.