Public schools and computers:

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

(Senior class)

A girl sits down next to me at a computer and opens IE.

In the address bar, she types "Winny the Pooh Bear pictures.com" ~ENTER~

The internet says: 404

She tries it yet again, different wording.

~Fails~

She gets frustrated, but another ghetto kid comes over to help her out from the same class.

"See, this what you do wrong..." and types in "www.Winiey the Poo Bear pictures.com"

Both are baffled by the 404 Error, yet keep trying.

Comments

[mathsnerd]

I'm crying so hard that I'm laughing too. Can't we just shoot them all?

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

It was a brand new school. After a month of kids defecating in their lockers and over radiators, the new school smelled like a sewage pump.

[mathsnerd]

Shooting is too good for them. Can we re-create the Spanish Inquisition, please please please please please?

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

in a very meager defense of the users in question, part of the problem is that they're accustomed to modern versions of IE trying very hard to find SOME goddamn thing that looks like they want no matter how retarded a string they put in the address bar. so they don't actually know that that behavior isn't okay.

I just typed "winnie the pooh bear pictures" into the address bar on IE7 and, surprise surprise, instantly got Google results. With three pictures of Pooh right on top of the page.

::helpless shrug:: blame microsoft.

edit: can't even put all the blame on microsoft - modern versions of Firefox do the same thing.

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

IE6, it was

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

One of my biggest gripes with Microsoft's "Do What I Should Have Meant" model of accepting user input .. it trains people to be even sloppier about their user input and makes it even harder to understand why some inputs get them what they want and some don't. Kind of reminds me of two dogs trying to sniff each other's uglies.

I used to wonder why people seemed to think it was perfectly normal to get random deluges of porn on their web browsers. I now realize that it's a natural consequence of "throw garbage at the machine and let the machine try to figure out what you wanted" user interface models ..

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Note that UI's that make such heroic efforts to figure out what the user wanted also give no clues as to spelling, inasmuch as the majority of the search results hopefully contain the correct one. (Don't get me started on the increasingly poor spelling ability of most of the population these days.) Which removes yet another self-correcting feedback feature and moves yet another parameter into the "arbitrary machine behavior" category of figuring out how the thing works.

At least Safari and Firefox make it clear which of the two things you're actually doing when you enter text in one of the address bar fields -- there's an "address" field, that is strictly for URL's, and there's a "search" field, which is strictly for search strings. There are very compelling autodidactic UI design related reasons to do it that way. And MS has never seemed to figure that out ..

[abstrak-tokatl.livejournal.com]

**cough** aol lUsers *cough*

[gholam.livejournal.com]

And to think that some people that I've met are sure that working as a computer tech is a dead end, because in just a few years, everyone will be proficient enough not to need techs anymore...

[eldyn.livejournal.com]

And everyone will be able to perform brain surgery with instructions from the interwebs so we won't need doctors anymore either.

[peace873.livejournal.com]

At that age, shouldn't they be looking for porn?

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

I think they were as soon as they misspelled Pooh as Poo.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

they are used to use Firefox :-)

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

Most of the people I talk to every day type everything (be it URL or search term) into the Google or Yahoo bar. They think the address bar is for display purposes only...

[wrench0626.livejournal.com]

My mother - who taught me how to use the internet - now does that. It's intensely annoying. She won't type into the address bar any more, but searches through the drop down menu for recent addresses! Maybe she just doesn't trust her typing any more...

[photosinensis.livejournal.com]

*turns black, grows a 'fro, acquires a handgun, and dons a black suit*

Google, motherfucker! Can you use it?

/Pulp Fiction

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

My mother in law had the opposite problem - if you sent her a URL in an HTML formatted email, instead of clicking it she'd type the URL into the search bar, and then you'd better hope that the url is the first hit for the url.

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

+1 for reference. ;)

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

Time to register a new porn domain, I guess.

[bamatone.livejournal.com]

She misspelled "Winnie," too.

I have a user here who does the same thing. Actually, she never puts .com on anything. Just puts the term into the IE7 address bar and hits enter.

So if she wants to go to walmart.com or something, she typed in "walmart" in the address bar and hits enter. Then Windows Live Search or whatever spits out some suggestions, and she clicks the link for walmart.com. I just keep quiet and let her do her thing.

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

thus why i like firefox more, inputing walmart takes you there.

I especially love it when looking for drivers/software, cus it takes me to the model's driver download page automatically.

IE is shit compared to FF, much like Netscape succumbed to IE.

[jill-idle.livejournal.com]

the user has it right. the old browser had it wrong. I'm a big believer in the user actually being the one who decides how the user interface should operate. also, i have an irrational bias against microsoft. so :P

[wibbble]

Nonsense.

Users don't decide how any complex interfaces outside of the computer work, so why should it be any different for computers? You don't get to choose how your indicators work on your car, or which lever controls what on a tractor.

Usability experts should do testing and determine a good interface - most people would come up with utter nonsense that's actually harder to use than a well-thought out interface, because most people can't look beyond the end of their nose.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

I remember shoulder-surfing someone at an AAFES exchange store around 1998 back when the web was still shiny... This woman looked at it, somewhat baffled, and then clicked on the bar where the word "Address:" was... and then started typing in her home address.

[mogaribue.livejournal.com]

The user is totally justified. Any computer in a school/lab environment is usually infected up the wazoo with malware. Upon a 404, they'll take you to a lovely search page based on the keywords and offer you some helpful executables!