Millennium Control Bar
Tue 24 Apr 2007, 3:50 pm
The Millennium Control Bar for the Macintosh client for Innovative Interfaces’ Millennium product is the best/worst (take your pick) example of mystery meat navigation that I have to deal with on a semi-regular basis.
Just what are those buttons supposed to mean? Sure, you can mouse over them to get a tooltip, but I usually have to mouse over half of them to find the thing I want. I also often forget that the one that says “WebOPAC” doesn’t go to controls to change the web version of the catalog, but instead just launches that in a browser window. Which I suppose would be helpful if I couldn’t remember where my library’s catalog was on the web.
The only consolation is that this is just a staff interface and not inflicted on the public.
I remember that toolbar! I never have to use it in my current job, but I always hated it at my old job. The worst is that I didn’t have permission to enter all of the modules, so I’d click on one, not realize that I’d asked for a module I couldn’t access, have it try to authenticate me for about half an hour, and then calmly inform me that there was an error. Grrr.
Comment by Iris — April 24, 2007 @ 9:49 pm
Useless. That picture only spoke that one word to me.
Comment by Julian — April 24, 2007 @ 9:53 pm
Oops. I meant that the toolbar is totally useless to me.
Comment by Julian — April 24, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
It’s perfectly simple, Steve, but here’s a template you can tape to your monitor to help you remember.
Row 1: Reverse the Earth’s rotation to turn back time/Consult Facts on File/Log into AOL/Hack into secret Pentagon databases
Row 2: View your location from space/Make a sandwich/Learn the facts of life/Illegally download the latest epsiode of The Sopranos
Row 3: Follow Alice down the rabit hole/Join the Federation of Planets
I hope that clears things up for you.
Comment by John Overholt — April 25, 2007 @ 7:58 am
Ha! Thanks, John. It’s all clear to me now. That is a much more powerful app than I ever gave it credit for.
Comment by Steve Lawson — April 25, 2007 @ 9:17 am
Oh, man…. Laughing out loud at the reference desk… scaring various and sundry students… Now I finally understand those icons. Thanks John!!! :)
Comment by Iris — April 26, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
hee! i’ve been on iii for five months and i still have to hover over those icons to know what they mean. shockingly, lots of us use the text based catalog when we want to do something quickly. at least on sirsi unicorn and dynix horizon, there was an option to include text with the mystery meat. glad i’m not the only one who finds this very user-unfriendly.
Comment by kate — April 29, 2007 @ 10:36 am
Hilarious and aptly descriptive labels, John! Thanks for brightening my afternoon. Oh, and Steve, it’s the same toolbar with a different border on Windows XP.
Comment by Anna Creech — April 10, 2008 @ 11:45 am