Our design philosophy is "what is the shortest distance between A and B for the user?".  We choose the "truly easy-on-the-user" path.  If we can save a mouse click, or reduce mouse mileage, or eliminate a keystroke, or eliminate a task completely, or automate something, or add flexibility, or make something behave more logically, then that is our mission. No matter what difficulties might be brought upon us, our mission is to make your job easier.

Speaking of tasks, our software is task-oriented. There has been much buzz in the software development world about object-oriented software.  Much object-oriented software ends up being just that – object-oriented.  First and foremost our software is built with the task in mind; that is, it is task-oriented. Objects serve to complete a task.  The task is the foremost object (pun intended).  There is a job to achieve:  The task that drives the objects.

For example, each time MultiForm is started, the user is immediately presented with a Dual Forms/Files Panel. Ready to go. No Blank Screens to figure out what to do next. No having to click things like File/Open/Browse/ChangeDir/Use-Slide-bar/can't find your file. MultiForm's forms list is displayed alongside of the files that go with the currently highlighted form. Nothing to do, Ready to go to work -- immediately upon starting!

The use of the words “Simplicity” and “Sophistication” in the same sentence is exactly our design goal: To have power and sophistication present without sacrificing the simplicity of use. It just warms our hearts to have it so succinctly stated by others. Achieving the right to have these two words in the same sentence involves what we call LP's Law: “THE INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL LAW OF PROGRAMMING”

INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL

In the programming world, there seems to be an inverse relationship between "easy on the user" and "easy on the programmer".   Typically when a program is easy on the user, programming it was h-a-r-d on the programmer.  Why?  Because the programmer took extra time to deal with the so-called "small" things, those things that make a smooth difference.  And some of those "small" things take a lot of extra time.  It's like taking the time to wetsand the bottom of a sailboat before a regatta, that is, sanding under water.  It's a smoothness thing.

Yet seems these days, most software companies choose the "easy on the programmer" path. "Easy on the programmer" usually involves using as many third-party parts and tools as one can find and then putting some glue between to make them appear to work together. With too much reliance placed on these third party pieces-parts, the layers of behavior get muddied and muddled, and become excessively difficult to control, and/or fix, if possible at all.   Such software becomes conviluted and difficult to operate.  What's ended up with is software that conforms to the term “Bloatware”; yet the "software" gets out the door quicker.   Rushing products out the door is why most software bought today, with only a few exceptions, is unbelievably difficult to use -- and head scratching at the least..  If you have ever been using software and found yourself scratching you head, and wondering if you were the idiot (like I have), you know to what I am referring.

Such companies, and their bloated software, tend to have large support staffs, and large support charges... Because of the muddled, conviluted illogical behavior of the software, which has to be explained, and explained, and explained away – at the cost of your time and your money.

I only talk about this because it is a pet peeve: Software that is difficult and illogical to use.  The whole reason for software is to make a task easier. Software is supposed to apply a cure to the difficult and illogical, right?  Certainly software has the opportunity to do that.  Where would its purpose be anything but that?

So here are the product details of some of the things we do behind the scenes to give your software our vision of easy and logical to use.