I got am email from the author of CLIX requesting elaboration on my comments on the interface and I felt it only fair to write a substantive response. That actually took a while to do, and since I went through the trouble of it, I might as well share.
CLIX is a simple (and very appealing) idea, a cmd-line trainer for newbs (somewhat similar to The Regex Coach), but the current implementaiton, a single-pane multi-table (w/ descriptions cut off and ordered by title) actually seems pretty hostile to the audience this tool is serving. A double-click drops a sheet which lets you edit and run the command.
So, my biggest suggestions were:
- the ability to search/filter
- make sure that the presentaiton was oriented to tasks
- make sure that enough of a description got listed to describe what each item did; right now you need to either expand the description a lot or double-click into a modal sheet just to see the description
To do this, I made one possible suggestion, a 3-pane interface
/--------------------------------
/---------| [Search__________] [Filter[v]] |
|category |--------------------------------|
| + xxxx | Name category |
| + xxxx | Name category |
| | Name category |
| | Name category |
| | Name category |
| |=============AV=================|
| | (viewer) |
| | Name category |
| | Description |
---------| |
| cmd |
| |
| shell results |
| |
--------------------------------/
This is by no means the ultimate interface, there are a lot of different ways to go about presenting this, but what you get:
- instant familiarity, looks like Mail, right? conceptually works the same as well
- categories on the sidebar gives easy nav/filtering organized around tasks
- search at the top allows for quick access (filter restricts search to certain fields; make the default/top category an ‘All’ view so search is attached to the category views, would avoid conceptual messiness of searching from all or selected categories
- w/ the preview pane, you longer need a modal sheet to run the program. You get the bonus of easy scanability – full description + easy navigation (just like how you interact w/ email)
- the fields in the list view should probably be customizable (and adapt, ie: category would disappear when you’re not in a global view/search)
RFEs: track date/frequency of use of commands to automatically build lists of commonly and recently run commands; possibly also allow ‘starring’ (ala gmail – a quick way to mark favorites)
If anyone has any thoughts (critiques, more effective alternative layouts), feel free to discuss.