Re: Printing Backgrounds

Brad Kemper wrote:
> 
> 
> but I imagine there could be ways to overcome that (a screen during 
> installation that asks the user to make a choice between suppressing all 
> backgrounds or not, or perhaps making the options more prominent on the 

The typical user of a browser wants instant gratification, they don't 
want to fill in a questionnaire before being able to use it.  Also, most 
of the potential questions, including this one, won't fully make sense 
until the user has had some experience with the software.

Incidentally, this is a human factors issue, not a software design one. 
  Adding an additional screen is not difficult, although all software 
changes are expensive.

> "Print" dialog box, so that people can quickly see where to change the 
> setting back if they wish), or phase in the solution by starting with 

The trend is actually away from making lots of options prominent, but 
rather to putting as many as possible on the advanced tab.  That's 
because having lots of options scares users.  Decisions have to be made 
as to which are most important to keep prominent.

> against the software publishers, and the designers could quickly learn 
> to start using print media style sheets. As well, I think that if the 

I don't believe that.  Print media style sheets already allow navigation 
clutter to be removed, but that is rarely done.  In my experience, most 
web sites are not designed to be printed at all (which means that 
default options need to be optimised for printing that which was not 
meant to be printed).

-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.

Received on Saturday, 6 October 2007 22:17:55 UTC