[GLLUG] Next Meeting/Presentations/etc

[Edward Glowacki]

Quoted from Matt Graham on Thu, Jan 17, 2002 at 02:07:08PM -0500:
> On Thursday 17 January 2002 13:25, Suzanne Reiner 8423 wrote:
> > Careful, Ben, they're going to 'nominate' you for the
> > secretary/webmaster.
> 
> Actually, I should ask:  What exactly is the secretary supposed to do 
> in this organization?  Keep meeting minutes, write up plans for future 
> events, create posters/flyers if we ever get around to holding a 
> general public event, implement Giant Laser Death Frisbees?  Like 
> Suzanne implied, there might be some overlap between secretary and 
> webmaster depending on how the Fearless Leader decides to do things.  
> (Post the meeting minutes/schedule on the site, etc.)

Dunno, probably keep minutes, update the website with meeting info,
so yeah, maybe they are the same position.  Or they could be
separate.  Or they could be both the same *and* separate. *ponder*

But I do like the idea of Giant Laser Death Frisbees! ;)

> I'd volunteer for the webmaster job in 5 seconds if I knew more about 
> design and usability issues.  I know basic HTML, PHP, and CGI-Perl, I 
> use a text editor to edit all documents, but making a site pretty was 
> never my big concern.  ("Hey, it displays in lynx and the w3.org 
> validator likes it, what more do you want?")  I believe JavaScript and 
> Flash are Evil^W^W would cause more problems than they'd solve on a 
> site like gllug.

For the GLLUG site, it's simple enough that you'd probably be
fine with your skill set.

But now I'm going to go off and talk about stuff in general.  =)

There's a couple of different parts related to building a
website (or any software for that matter). Those parts are:

GUI/Web programmer: Actually writes code, knows GUI toolkits, etc.
GUI/Web designer:   Works on usability, layout, navigation, structure, etc.
Graphics designer:  Creates nice images, does some layout-related stuff,
                    helps choose colors, etc.
Technical writer:   Writes wording for things (buttons, titles, links, etc.)

(You can also require people like database experts, task domain experts, etc.,
but I'm just covering the basics here)

Note the common terms used in the first 3, designer is used twice
and so is GUI/Web.  Many people therefore confuse the three jobs,
though they are all distinct positions with different responsibilities.

By your own admission, you are mostly a GUI/Web programmer with
little or no skill in the other areas.  But knowing this and
admitting to it, you can then seek out for example a graphics
designer to create logos and buttons and a GUI/Web designer to help
build the site navigation and layout.  This is all a "Good Thing(TM)".

Where problems start to occur is when people with one skill assume
by association that they have another (or often it's management
that makes that assumption).  Take for example a "pure coder" who
tries to design GUIs.  Sure, the coder may have great command of
the GUI toolkit, but that doesn't directly lead to a great GUI.
Likewise, if the same task was given to a graphics designer, the
GUI would probably look really slick but would also not necessarily
be a great GUI.  

Even combining a good GUI programmer and a good graphics artist is
not enough to create a great GUI, though it may look very nice and
technically work well.  Personally, I think this is what happened
to Evolution, you have some great coders and some graphics designers,
which resulted in a large, nice-looking project that isn't particularly
easy to use (nor is it horribly difficult to be fair).  A lot of
other open source projects run into similar difficulties, however
they generally don't even seem to have a graphics designer, and
the whole thing is just done by a bunch of programmers.



-- 
Edward Glowacki				glowack2@msu.edu
GLLUG Peon  				http://www.gllug.org
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
                -- Jules de Gaultier