I saw some rather heated discussion over Beryl in Ubuntu a while ago (wasn't too interesting, so I don't know where it was now). In one of the comments, a person whines about how there are too many new terms like expose, desktop wall, viewports, and so on, and how all that is quite confusing (I'm guessing s/he must have meant 'to Beryl newbies'). The person went on to invent new words for those items s/he thought were poorly named. Another person then jumps in and says, yeah, why call something a computer when we can call it "a machine that processes data according to sets of instructions". Well, there were actually days when people didn't know what a mouse was and how to use a cursor. There still are people like that. So how did people solve such problems back then?
Those users who have been using computers long enough will most likely remember Windows 95. It was the first 32-bit (kinda) desktop Windows operating system, and unlike its predecessors like Windows 3.11 or Windows 3.0, it was also the first one that loaded the graphical desktop environment by default (you couldn't, as far as I can recall, go to command prompt at boot time... or you could but it was not default anyway).
After its release, Windows 95 made Windows what it is today: the most successful desktop operating system in history. Come on, now, it is true. Even I admit it. It's user interface was widely emulated, and although it originally stole a lot from Apple's MacOS, it was defining new standards of usability in the sense that people measured how some other interface was usable compared to Windows interface.
Now, before Windows 95, I was using mostly plain MS-DOS. I didn't own a rodent, or any other pointing device, nor did I feel the need to point at anything. I saw people using their 486 boxen with mice on them pointing at files in Volkov Commander, and I just didn't get it. With Windows 95, I was literally forced to radically change my attitude towards the mice. I was forced to love them and cherish them as the only way to get around the desktop. Oh, and did I mention desktop was news to me as well?
Yes, desktop was huge news. Most people didn't know what to make of it. What was it for? Sure, it's called a desk-top, but it didn't look like a desk to us. So how did we come to know the desktop and fell home on it? Simple... The answer was VIDEO. Yes, we had video tutorials for using the desktop, clicking on icons, and doing pretty much everything people take for granted today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, chances are you had a person with at least basic Windows skills sitting next to you, telling you what to do. Back in Windows 95 days, we had no one to rely on for advice. Only that video. And a Bill Plympton cartoon, of course.
I found a less interactive tutorial that also shipped with Windows 95 days. If you take a look at it, you'll get the idea of what it was like in those days. We had pretty much everything spelled out to us. I believe there was a tutorial on how to use a mouse in there as well. Something that went like "click here now by moving the cursor (cursor blinks) to this spot (spot blinks) and pressing the left mouse button (picture of mouse with left button highlighted): this is called a single left click".
Thanks to the arguable intuitiveness of the mouse as a pointing device and intense indoctrination, we are now proficient clickers of any desktop environment know to mankind. But you now know it was never just intuitive, or just simple, or just "usable". It was learned, and gotten used to.
So, for all those complaining about Compiz Fusion being tough, please watch videos on YouTube and read tutorials. Learn!
