Great Thoughts on Options in Software

Please note that all opinions are that of the author.

Matt has his usual wonderful thoughts, this time on options in software. Having once sold a piece of software with roughly this many options (shown on left). Matt's right -- most people won't use the options and you can always expose a plugin api for it if you have to.

Good job Matt! This was a gutsy post to write -- what Geek doesn't want features? Having big options dialogs makes you look like you have tons of features. And you do, just not usable ones. Its all about the 80 / 20 rule and clearly you understand that. And, while Joel would argue that the 20 is always different, I don't buy that. While there always are differences, there are also commonalities that, if you take the time to understand your users, can be leveraged to everyone's advantage.