Spehro, On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 10:30:00 -0500, Spehro Pefhany wrote: >...< > But now I figure that if I can't come up with something really cool, it's best to mimic a well-known consumer product that most potential users are familiar with (a car radio, a cell phone, a TV, a microwave oven)............ But NOT a VCR! It's reckoned that at least 90% of users don't know how to set the things to record a programme, and that's down to the interface designers. They have never come up with a single "obvious" way to do it, so each invents their own . I have a JVC and a Panasonic VCR in my living room, and the former seems to have been designed by someone who's never used one. If you set a time/channel to record every week, re-displaying it shows the *date* of the original setting, and a "weekly" indicator, so to find out what day of the week it is, you have to look it up on a calendar. The Panasonic shows the day of the week, which is what you need to know. If you try to set a timed recording less than a minute before it starts, the JVC refuses to accept it (it says "Error"). The Panasonic will accept times that have passed, and if that means it should be recording now, it starts doing so immediately - just what you want! Human interface is a very complex topic, which tends to be skated over by geek-type designers, with disasterous results in the finished product - I hope nobody here falls into that trap! :-) Incidentally, on the accelerating-button topic, I hate it! Lotus WordPro has this feature on the keyboard repeat, with the result that I'm usually just reaching the character I want to edit when it shifts to high speed and I miss it... and then end up swinging past in both directions until I give up trying to use repeat at all. I must find try to a way to turn it off. Cheers, Howard Winter St.Albans, England -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu