Subject: IPP> ipp: / http: in the UI

From: Paul Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:19:33 -0700

Anybody who beleives that ipp: in the UI is less confusing that http: has
clearly never met a real user.

A real user sees "blah-blah-blah-ya-da-ya-da-ya-da" when the see a URL. They
have no idea what any of it means; they dont care. The vast majority of
users dont even get "directory/filename"

An IPP client will probably allow people to type in "megacorp.com/printer1"
without any IPP: or HTTP: or port number.

Nobody is going to click on an IPP URL in a browser - i.e. the URL used to
actually send print to it. What would that mean? If they do access it via a
browser they will click on something that switches them to a client
('printto:megacorp.com/printer1'), downloads a driver
('http:...../selfextrcat.exe') or opens a web page from the printer
explaining what they should do. (Actually I quite like 'printto:' - what do
others think).

Saying that IPP lets me know that its a printer is an excuse for bad design.
Any UI  that expects people to differentiate by hovering over the link and
looking at the status bar is broken.

Nobody is going to put printer URLs on their business cards.

---

From: Jay Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:40:10 -0400

Paul,

> (Actually I quite like 'printto:' - what do others think).

Glad you brought this up.  If the final resolution of this whole
scheme issue results in something *other* than "http:", then
I'd prefer Keith's suggestion of "print:" as a scheme as opposed
to your "printto:", since the "to" suffix is both unnecessary
and counter-intuitive (given that the PDU can very well contain
requests that are not job submissions).

> looking at the status bar is broken.

Perhaps you're right that the UI should *not* expect this
"hovering" behavior, but nonetheless it is quite prevalent
from what I've experienced.  That is, I don't think we should
discount the frequency and value of hovering as part of a
positive user experience.

> Nobody is going to put printer URLs on their business cards.

Do you really believe this?  I mean, an aweful lot of IPP
proponents (in the PWG) clearly believe that one of the greatest
values of IPP is its use as a fax-alike mechanism.  I honestly
don't think such a capability is nearly as powerful a potential
as some of these people seem to believe, but there will be some
who actually implement this, IMHO.

	...jay

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