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homotopy-io / homotopy-rs

A Rust/WASM implementation of homotopy.io
https://homotopy.io
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
80 stars 7 forks source link

The new interface is less intuitive #1444

Open richardsouthwell opened 1 month ago

richardsouthwell commented 1 month ago

I work at PlantingSpace and was happily using the old version of homotopy io. I hope it doesn't soon get replaced with this new beta version of homotopy io. The old version was much easier for new users to understand in my opinion. There are 4 main reasons for this in my opinion:

(1) Having buttons you can click for source and target etc. is a lot easier for new users to understand then pressing s, t keys etc.

(2) Having buttons labeled with English words as opposed to letters makes it much easier to start. I think calling the buttons at the top right P and V is not so good, because it makes it much harder for new comers to understand how to use the app. Or you could at least give a longer English description of what those buttons do when you hover the mouse over them.

(3) I found the way you could project or slice through cells easier to understand then in this new version. But that could just be because I have not got used to it yet.

(4) There seems to be a lot more jargon and extra options in this new version, which makes it look more complicated.

I hope I have not been too critical. Its just I really love homotopy io so much. I think it has the potential to transform mathematics education, but I hope it remains the kind of thing that's easy for new comers to understand, without introducing excessive jargon or symbolic encoding.

robertmaxton42 commented 1 month ago

Personally, I love the new shortcuts, but I agree that it should be an optional "advanced user" feature adding on to discoverable buttons and menu options. That said, there are in fact buttons for source and target to the left hand side.