{"id":1296,"date":"2009-11-07T09:15:07","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T23:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.wordpress.com\/?p=1296"},"modified":"2009-11-07T09:15:07","modified_gmt":"2009-11-06T23:15:07","slug":"maybe-its-just-as-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/11\/07\/maybe-its-just-as-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe it’s just as well…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…that the folks over at OpenOffice have concentrated so much on mimicking interfaces rather than trying to come up with their own interface.<\/p>\n

If this is the best that can be achieved<\/a>, I’m not surprised that OpenOffice takes longer to launch and gets uglier with each iteration.\u00a0This is not interface design. It reminds me of the Kill-o-Zap gun from Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, which was described thusly in the book:<\/p>\n

The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. ‘Make it evil,’ he’d been told. “Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I keep hoping this is a joke, but I can’t see anything that suggests it’s anything other than something serious. It’s not a mouse \u2013 it’s an obscenity of undesign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…that the folks over at OpenOffice have concentrated so much on mimicking interfaces rather than trying to come up with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[489,588,605,697],"class_list":["post-1296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aside","tag-interface-design","tag-mice","tag-mouse","tag-open-office"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t