Say you've written a program that a lot of people will use. Say you really, really don't want them to mess with certain of the program's files. You could give them a readme file that contains a warning, but any developer knows that getting the user to actually
read a readme file is about as easy as getting a 14-year-old to give up MySpace. Google, however, has come up with a very novel solution with Google Desktop: Not one readme file--twelve! Blogger Can Erten has posted
a couple screenshots of Google's novel approach to getting a warning across to users. Since it really has to be seen to be believed, I'll just refer you to the image at right. Clever!
Tags: google, googledesktop, readme, warning
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Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsKeithSep 21st 2006 6:28PM
As clever as this seems, it relies on the fact that the person is using list view to examine the contents of a folder. The default for all versions of Windows is "small icon", which would make all those long file names very unreadable, as they'd be severely truncated.
I would say that the average user doesn't know how to (or doesn't bother to) change the default view to use list view, so this technique is lost on all but the power users -- who probably already know to read a README file.
MysteriusSep 21st 2006 10:13PM
Actually, the picture shows "Details" view, and the default is "Tiles" view. Either "List" or "Details" works. And while not *all* users even use List or Details view, the set of users who do is significantly larger than just "power users" alone. (And then there are also non-"power users" who also read the readme file, as small as that set may be.)
MysteriusSep 21st 2006 10:14PM
Oh, and I have to ask: What themes and icons are you using?
GrahamSep 22nd 2006 8:09AM
This has been around for years, FTP dirs, Soulseek shares, etc...
andrewSep 23rd 2006 10:58PM
I agree with the last poster. This is not new. I set up a BBS in 1990 doing this sort of thing. It's done all over IRC, on some FTP sites, etc. Maybe Google Desktop is one of the first applications to do this. However, they should have made each item a picture - then you can have the thumbnail show "WARNING" or something else for the non-power users described above.