Re: Green-screen versus browser

[Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Good points, Doug.  A keyboard is going to be more
efficient than a mouse for data entry in most cases. 
Part of the effiency though is in downloading an
entire score sheet to the browser, then submitting it
to the server as a batch, as opposed to requesting
server resources for each event triggered by the UI,
such as changing the input format, popup windows, or
paging.

These particular scores are recorded by teachers, not
data entry clerks, and done just three (3) times each
year.

For those who may not know me, I'm not suggesting
offloading Web applications to .Net or J2EE runtime
environments.  Nearly everything I do is in ILE RPG.

Nathan.


--- Douglas Handy <dhandy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Nathan,
> 
> >Each measurement has an associated popup,
> > enabling all measurements to be recorded with just
> two
> > (2) mouse clicks.  
> 
> > Something like this challenges the conventional
> wisdom
> > that 5250 is always more efficient for data entry.
> 
> I disagree. Anyone familar with a 10-key number pad
> will run circles
> around the mouse clicks by just keying the two digit
> value.  You can
> do that much faster than you can navigate the mouse
> to the proper
> value, and likely have a lower error rate.  (It
> looks pretty easy to
> click on the wrong value in he 01 to 99 popup to me,
> if you are trying
> to move the mouse fast enough to be efficient at
> this process.)
> 
> Of course, the browser could have input fields too
> instead of a popup.
> 
> I think it can be argued that a GUI interface is
> easier to train to
> newbies, but rarely will mouse activies be faster
> than a trained
> keyboard user.  (I will say that I do like the
> ability to have
> accelerator keys to move the cursor to specific
> input fields.  And
> from that standpoint a GUI *can* be more efficient
> for even keyboard
> data entry.  But few people seem to design GUI
> screens with proper
> keyboard accelerators, which is another of my pet
> peeves...)
> 
> Doug
> 

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