Amen David,
I have been looking for this sollution trhoughout OpenACS and wondëred why the function s only available in limited spaces. That would a great move forward and be tremendous help in evangalism. End- users don't wan't to fuss with html codes, and as a moderator I don't want to have to explain the obvious time and again. I am sure, once we have a few people interested in ironing out these details, OpenACS will become much more user friendly. Anybody interesting to join the "breadcrums of usability department"? A good friend of mine is professional psychologist, and has worked as corporate secretary for software companies. Understanding how people use IT is a job apart. I don't want to recreate Jacob's Usit, but overall attention to detail (descriptive text in functionality, user experience etc. is someting that will become more important by the days I feel. Translating functionality - Tech Talk & and newbie appreciation is something we realy need to look into.
I am sure the folks at the universities using ACS have classes set up for this kind of experiments, and it might be an idea to involve them in a process to translate techno talk into human language to increase usability, and cut back in training tasks. I am a dummy and available as testperson 😉)
One simple example. In the registration process in ACS 3.2.5, the "default term "bad password is used in the screen people will see if they can't remember their password. Although the function is defined correct, the term "bad password" should have been "forgot your password and maybe a few more lines describing the process". It took us (non tcl programmers quite some time to figure out how to correct this simple message within the code. Yet it caused major confusion with users, who started registering again, because they didn't understood the term "bad pasword, without explanation.
You may think I am fussing over irrelevant details, but don't forget, I have learned to live with this situation, unfortunately my clients don't care, and will move on if they don't understand how a system works.
Cheers
Ben
p.s. Is there something like a cheatsheet for tcl newbies? I am now learning by copying / trial and error. From other ACS sites. I mean, not a class to become fullscale TCL programmer, but a few basic guidelines dummies can understand? Thanks.
