When I was growing up, we had operating systems that exposed a lot of the technical details about their inner workings, and websites that let us use code to customize them, like MySpace and Geocities. UX designers in tech have since optimized away most of the stuff that allowed and encouraged people to learn to use technology and now people get confused by files and browser tabs. And as the knowledge shrinks, more and more things have to be simplified away. I only ever see it as a one way road.
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@Gargron i agree. i feel like the ability to customize, tinker, modify, edit... even hack (gently) websites and web apps especially has been taken away over the past 10-15 years of so. editing the live HTML of a Myspace page back in the 2000s almost feels impossible without all of the guardrails put in place today. it was actually fun to grow up on the internet and with computers during the 90s and 00s!
So.... does this mean custom native Mastodon UI css and scripting on a per-user, or per-instance basis will be officially supported sometime?
@Gargron For me it was Neopets!
@Gargron Yes, but it's also worth considering that, by today, there are people using this kind of technology that, three decades earlier, weren't still nowhere near tools more technologically complex than a TV set or a radio receiver....🙈
@Gargron Yes!
And while I appreciate that one should not need to be a nerd to use a computer, I also don't see the drive towards computers as locked-down appliances as desirable.
@Gargron that's because you're technically proficient.
@odr_k4tana And why am I technically proficient? It is because of what was available for me to play with when I was growing up. Something no longer available to newer generations.
@Gargron @odr_k4tana As a counterpoint, microcontrollers today are so much better and so much cheaper than they ever were in the past it’s ridiculous. People who want to learn how computers actually work have never had it so good.
@Gargron @odr_k4tana
Eugen - I remember installing Slackware (4) from 3.5" floppies because my CDROM was not supported, and then learning how to roll my own device driver so I could used the ROM drive. It never worked quite right but I learned a lot in the process.
This. This, we have taken for granted for too long'
@Gargron nope. That digital behaviourism stuff is not true. You are/were interested in it and actively pursued it. Contrary to the average Mastodon user's beliefs (apparently), most people are not inherently interested in tech. They use it, but hate having to deal with it.
@odr_k4tana @Gargron I mean you're both painting with too broad of strokes in your generalizations and missing wide swathes of populations while neither of you is technically wrong about the specific users you're talking about. Usability is a spectrum and creating a one-size-fits-all UX is an antipattern no matter how much or little it abstracts away decision making possibilities from the user.
Open standards, data, and interoperability enable these experiences for the whole spectrum. MySpace was a great example because you didn't have to understand HTML/CSS to use it, but if you wanted to understand it then you could use it to personalize your page, if you didn't care one bit about learning any of it but still wanted to personalize your page then it opened a market for templates and style generators with better usability, and if you had no interest in any of that then the app was no less usable.
