Tom Corey wrote:
>My comment wasn't aimed at Delphi/CodeGear, but
>rather at the disgruntled Usual Suspects here who will always manage to
>find a cause for complaint.

I probably should not read too much into a one-line sarcastic comment,
but you seemed to be suggesting that Nick and the Delphi team should stop
working so hard to try to satisfy their customers.

There are, and will probably always be, the vocal few at this forum who
don't even use Delphi any more, and are just here to take cheap pot-shots
at CG and the Delphi team. There's no reason for Nick to do anything
different for those people, since they'll just change their complaint, but
still be just as vocal and negative.

Then there are the many who use Delphi regularly, and love to use it, but
who get rather negative when they find they need to complain about their
frustrations with the product. Nick and the team still need to listen to
these people, despite their lack of tact and diplomacy.

Rick Carter
carterrk
Chair, Delphi/Paradox SIG, Cincinnati PC Users Group

--- posted by geoForum on [url down]

Tom Corey wrote:
> m. Th. wrote:
>
>> do you have some concrete ways in mind to find what your
>> are your user base's needs? :-)
>
> It won't matter - no matter what they do, there will be any number of
> vocal users who find reason to complain about it.

It does matter :-) even if we have our background vocals. And, imho,
they have their role too.

....being serious, one of the main roles of the community is to mitigate
this. "Instructions" for those interested ( ;-) ) at:

[url down]

(down to page, read the chapter 'The "Noisy Minority" Effect')

HTH,

Rick Carter wrote:

>
> However, I'd also say that, over the years, the Delphi team at their best
> has often surprised us by introducing new tools and features that we never
> even asked for. When they go beyond just correcting the biggest complaints
> about the previous release(s), and go on to delight us with new features
> that have us saying "I didn't even ask for this, but now I don't want to
> work without it," that's when they're at their best. And I'm still hoping
> for some of that in the upcoming releases.
>

Imho, it's very dangerous, to say at least. Why CodeGear was spun-off?
But to be productive, here are some examples given:

Delphi 8 + .NET strategy in last 4-5 years. Kylix story. C++BuilderX
story. The Delphi 2006/2007 Help2 saga. InstallAware (Installation
experience). Quality of Delphi 2005/2006. (I can post more if you want).

OTOH, a company like them normally must have and they have /very/
skilled people, /much/ more skilled than most of us in mastering their
code-base. (Compiler, IDE, VCL etc.). And they have them. At least imho.
Hence, it's really necessary to see innovation coming from their part,
especially in holistic themes. But because, as any developer, they tend
to 'loose the contact with the user reality' - in fact, is the theme of
the article which OP posted - that's why they must cross-check
periodically their direction with the community as whole. Also see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...x#aspm__topic3

and

[url down]

(more on request).

> Then again, the bar is always being raised for including new features.
> I have to admit, now that I've heard about the "Historical Debugger"
> proposed for the next version of VS, I'm almost tempted to "jump ship"
> and switch languages unless the Delphi team comes up with something
> equally good or better:
> [..]
>


[url down]

"If you have a book and you don't know that you have it, or where it is,
it's like you don't. Or worse. It just takes space" :-)

Well, I admit that Chris's post perhaps isn't similar with what you
meant, but it works. Now. And can be enhanced. (Snapshots, better
interaction with developer etc.)

"willr" <willr> wrote in message
news:3a11
> GrandmasterB wrote:
>> Let me sum up the entire article to save people the time of reading it:
>> Give your customers what they really need.
> Unfortunately you got it right.
> What they need is not always what they ask for -- and that's where the
> battle starts.
> I think you made a slip -- and got it right. But maybe not!

Yep, thats exactly what I meant.

Customers arent, for the most part, designers and developers. They arent
likely to be skilled in looking at a problem and developing software
processes to make it more efficient. They dont know the technologies
available, nor how they can be harnassed to solve a problem. They dont
usually think about long term maintenance of an app, nor the long term
implications of choices made during development.

So what a customer 'wants' is, more than likely, not what they 'need'. They
may think they want X, but X may be just some convoluted solution they've
come up with to solve the bigger problem, Y, because they didnt understand
technology enough to find a better solution.

"MikeR" <nf4lNoSpam> wrote in message
news:db8f
> GrandmasterB wrote:
>> Let me sum up the entire article to save people the time of reading it:
>> Give your customers what they really need.
>
> They won't pay for that, only what they think they *WANT*. ;=o

Very true. Thats one of the reasons its pointless to lecture developers to
make their software 'just work'. Its not always the developers that cause
the problem.

I think many will like this:
How to Design a Great User Experience
[url down]

Eric Grange wrote:

> > Yeah, really. Sometimes stating the obvious is very, very valuable.
>
> Stating the obvious in hindsight is of very little value actually:
> everyone and his dog does that all the time.
>
> Stating the obvious with foresight is another matter. ^_^
>
> Eric

Why is it is that so many of us say "yes I know", but still act as if
we didn't? That is the real question.

And being among the guilty, I liked the link as well :-)

Rick Carter wrote:
> Jouni Aro wrote:
>
>> It is just a good reminder to be aware that most of the application
>> users will not probably find the cool features from your applications -
>> if they ever get a clue that the features even exist. The basic things
>> must be as simple as possible from the start.
>>
>> The difference between "us techies" against "normal people" is that we
>> are interested in finding out what can be done with the software and
>> understand them ourselves. But most normal people would rather do
>> without the software at all. They just need to get their job done and
>> are forced to use software for that.
>
> Good post! (Also good were all the paragraphs I snipped.)

Thanks Rick!

Jouni Aro wrote:

> In general that means you now have a separate digibox and TV set.
> Both have a remote control. You use the other one for channel
> selection and the other for volume control.

Heh! I know that feeling well, and my wife gets frustrated by it all
the time. In our household we have a TV hooked up to a home theatre
system, satellite pay TV receiver, and DVD/HDD recorder, each with
their own remotes. Thankfully we only need to use the TV remote when we
need to change the picture aspect ratio for some reason (rare), but
that still leaves us with one remote to change the channel, one remote
to control the volume, and another to control recording and playback of
recorded content (this remote also has basic TV control functionality,
which is why the TV remote is mostly unneeded).

I have been contemplating getting a universal remote, but am concerned
that I'll have a solution that will provide 95% of the functionality of
all the remotes, and the missing 5% will be important functions that we
use daily (FI, the DVD/HDD remote has a button which allows you to skip
content in 30 second increments, which is very handy for skipping ad
breaks).

I'd be interested to know whether others have successfully solved this
problem with the same convenience as their existing remotes, and no
loss of functionality. The last thing I want is a fully customizable
remote which takes navigating 3 levels of menus to access some commonly
used function that used to be only one button click away.

"Rick Carter" <carterrk> wrote in message news:dc11
> Great blog entry by Joe White (notes from a TechEd presentation):
> [..]
>
The fastest growing and most obnoxious example of
suckware is the imposition of flash on websites with
no alternative.

I'm amazed at how many car dealer websites that I visited
when I was car shopping that insisted I use flash and
endure their animation or movie to access their websites.
I largely eschewed their websites in favor of Edmunds.com
and test drives.

To its credit Edmunds.com has resisted giving the geeks
a chance to prove how "smart" they are.

Hilton Evans wrote:
>>
> The fastest growing and most obnoxious example of
> suckware is the imposition of flash on websites with
> no alternative.
>

It's not just flash. Late at night, I'm working, need to look something
up, and do a search on Google. Click on the website that supposedly has
the answer, and some idiot song starts playing full blast, scaring the
dog and waking up the kids...

David Erbas-White

"David Erbas-White" <derbas> wrote in message news:f8a1
> Hilton Evans wrote:
>>>
>> The fastest growing and most obnoxious example of
>> suckware is the imposition of flash on websites with
>> no alternative.
>>
>
> It's not just flash. Late at night, I'm working, need to look something up, and do a search on Google. Click on the website that
> supposedly has the answer, and some idiot song starts playing full blast, scaring the dog and waking up the kids...

Long ago I disabled sound and animation to avoid just that.

"Rick Carter" <carterrk> wrote in message
news:f4e6

> Then there's the more cynical developers who only give the customer what's
> spelled out in the requirements. Never mind what the software they're
> looking to replace is already doing, or what most people would reasonably
> expect from good software.

Giving customers exactly what is written in requirements can be a disaster.
The customer gets mad, you have to fix it anyway to save the relationship.
I think the developer has to be convinced that the software will provide at
least some value to the customer. Of course if you are just a lowly
employee you may have to crank out a rubbish program - but even then you can
try to structure the program to allow future rework.

The software business - a classic human activity, with politics, diplomacy,
economics, trade, technical skill, risk management. If it was easier, we
might be out of a job.

Roger Lascelles

"David Clegg" wrote:
>
> I'd be interested to know whether others have successfully solved this
> problem with the same convenience as their existing remotes, and no
> loss of functionality. The last thing I want is a fully customizable
> remote which takes navigating 3 levels of menus to access some commonly
> used function that used to be only one button click away.

I use one remote to control the TV, TiVo, DVD, VRC, Cable Box and AM/FM
Radio. It's a OneForAll model URC 6131nw which handles 6 devices. Their
website at [url down] lists both Aus & NZ. You do need to program
it but it's as simple as programming a CF device using Delphi. ;-)

> Heh! I know that feeling well, and my wife gets frustrated by it all
> the time.

You would need to teach her that the 6 buttons across the top of the remote
labeled, TV, DVR, DVR, etc switch devices - if she is still frustrated you
might try for a new wife...

On 5 Jun 2008 14:23:31 -0700, "David Clegg" <dclegg> wrote:
<snip>
>I have been contemplating getting a universal remote, but am concerned
>that I'll have a solution that will provide 95% of the functionality of
>all the remotes, and the missing 5% will be important functions that we
>use daily (FI, the DVD/HDD remote has a button which allows you to skip
>content in 30 second increments, which is very handy for skipping ad
>breaks).
>
>I'd be interested to know whether others have successfully solved this
>problem with the same convenience as their existing remotes, and no
>loss of functionality. The last thing I want is a fully customizable
>remote which takes navigating 3 levels of menus to access some commonly
>used function that used to be only one button click away.
<snip>

I use a Logitech Harmony 1000 for that. It controls my DVD, VCR (yes
I still have one), my Vista Media Center, plasma, amp/receiver, and
Foxtel box. It has replaced six remotes.

Oz