Original Posting of 2/27/2022
In the photo, below, there are a lot of gages, dials, switches, and buttons, but there probably isn't one of them that I couldn't figure out with a moment to ponder. (I'll grant you that past experience and training make this so and if my pondering isn't productive, I have a friend on whom to call - eh, Stu?) They are unambiguous to me - I know which switch I need to flip/push/turn and what will happen when I flip/push/turn it.
Compare the above display to the onscreen display, below. The display, below, is clean, uncluttered, and has few toggle buttons* on which I might click. I've seen similar displays hundreds of times, as I'm confident have most of you. So why can I not interpret the meaning? Why do I not know whether each item is in a "disabled" or "enabled" state?
This lack of comprehension on my part is undoubtedly an error in the wiring of my brain. My brain readily accepts the task of interpreting a toggle button that has both options listed and a means of indicating the button's current state, but faced with the above toggle buttons, I am flummoxed. I don't know whether the label indicates the current or desired state - until I've studied the heck out of it. (And, even then, I'm not sure.)
Confession: It took me decades to be able to visually determine the state of the electrical circuit controlled by a rocker or push-button switch on an appliance when the options were labeled as shown, below. What in the world do "O" and "|" mean? It's a mystery to me. Yes, sometimes I feel like a complete, gibbering idiot; but I'll wager that I'm far from alone.
How did this all come to mind? I was getting ready to write about having solved a household problem...which led me to thinking of "Hints from Heloise" that was a feature in our local newspapers for years and years - 'way back when. I searched on that title and was amazed (goodness knows why) to find a Hints from Heloise website - that promptly assaulted me with a demand that I allow it to use cookies. Hoo, boy - that set me off on Pet Peeve #19.
ADDITION of 3/25/2022 - Toggle Button
This (below) is how I wish to be led by the hand. (From an email from Apple - available here.
* A nice explanation of the difference between a "toggle switch" and a "toggle button" is provided in The Full guide to UI [User Interface] design at Toggle switch design.
A toggle switch operates in changes in the system. Think dark/light modes on the iOS settings, or a privacy mode in a navigator. The toggle switch represents a decision that can affect all screens of the app or device – this means that switches deal in system states.
In contrast, a toggle button refers to a change that only takes place on that screen. Think flight dates and search filters. Toggle buttons are meant for contextual states.
Well I'm not type-rated on that aircraft, but I can tell you the master switch is OFF ;-)
And accepting only necessary cookies (as shown) is a good idea. You'll have noticed, CC, that my blog doesn't need any cookies at all. Way to go :-)
Posted by: Ole Phat Stu | February 28, 2022 at 08:52 AM
If you believe that function is not unnecessary then click the button if you do not disagree that the said function should not be disabled.
Posted by: Peter Tibbles | February 28, 2022 at 11:12 PM
Stu--"Only necessary" is the way I go - if I can figure out what I'm doing. 😳😞😖 I'm not knowledgeable enough to know how to check whether a given website leaves cookies, so I'll accept your statement on your own website as fact. (Besides, AFAIK, you've never lied to me.☺️)
Peter--Thanks for setting my eyes spinning. (It's not nice to play with an old woman's mind!) 😵😵💫😕
Posted by: Cop Car | March 01, 2022 at 07:40 AM
To get into Zac's I have to open the shutter by inserting the key and turning it one way or another (for open/close). I have to stand and think each time which one it is. It should be simple. My brain just fails me.
Posted by: Liz Hinds | March 02, 2022 at 10:47 AM
The first picture, although cluttered, I have no issues interpreting. It is full of fuel and level to the horizon. Flaps are not activated (but one would not expect them to be so, since there is no power activated yet).
Maybe I'm misinterpreting the question, but the toggle buttons on the website seem to be clear to me. All say disabled in their current status. If you click the button, it should turn green and say "enabled" (or some form of that term).
Rocker switches I still don't understand. I know one means the circuit is "closed" and the other means the circuit is "open", but I can't remember which is which and the icons don't help me. I also can't remember if "open" means on or off. One reason I could never be an electrical engineer (among about about 1,000 reasons - LOL).
Posted by: bogie | March 05, 2022 at 04:02 AM
Liz--I don't know what you call "the shutter", so I'm not sure what you're up to. I assume that you know what you're doing - ; )
Bogie--Your dad has always confused me by asking me to "open" or "close" a light. Makes no sense to me and he can't understand why I don't understand. I know that the house that my great-grandparents bought when I was age 2 had controls for both gas and electric lights and that the gas valves were actuated with a rotary control. It never occurred to me, before, but perhaps HH's relatives had a house(s) that were old enough to also have gas lights, in which case the lights were, indeed, turned "on" by "opening" the gas valve. Hmmm...I'll have to check with him. (Or maybe it was just a thing lost in translation from Serbo-Croatian?)
Posted by: Cop Car | March 05, 2022 at 03:31 PM
After looking it up - an open circuit is the opposite of what I automatically think of, it does not allow electricity to flow. So Open is "off". And the open symbol is the "O" on the switch.
To me that is so confusing - O looks like a sign for "continuous", so I expect the power to be on. If I ran the world, switches like that would go back to the red and green dots to indicate the mode in which it sits.
Posted by: bogie | March 06, 2022 at 04:05 AM
Like you, my first thought is "O" is "on". I'll buy your red and green dots. Trust me on this, though: When your dad says to "open" the light, he means to turn it "on". As I wrote, before, I don't know how his family got to that convention, but in 64 years I've not been able to change his mind. HH often says, "hit the switch" by which he means to "put the switch in the other position".
Posted by: Cop Car | March 06, 2022 at 05:00 AM
Flipping the slide switch will usually -- but not always -- change the descriptive text; for cookies, it will go from "Disabled" to "Enabled." Or at least it should. Then you can flip it back to off and reject 'em all.
"O" and "|" were supposed to be unambiguous: O for an open circuit (and earlier versions sometimes had two stubby lines, one from each side, headed towards the center but not meeting) and | for a connected circuit. European manufacturers were having to silkscreen a zillion versions of "off" and "on" next to switches on things, depending on what country it was going to be sold in, and they wanted a way to avoid that and just make one version.
(This is the same reason for "international" color coding of the insulation on household electrical wiring, in which brown is the "live," blue is the neutral and ground is green with a yellow stripe: European countries were using every combination of black, gray, red, green and white [and a few others] for this, often in incompatible ways. So they wiped the slate clean and went with a combination of colors nobody used. The British used red for live, black for neutral and "clear" (sometimes translucent whitish) for ground; when I had electricians wiring up some British-built stuff at work, they were very puzzled by it: two hots, a neutral and no ground, by the U.S. color coding!)
Posted by: Roberta X | March 08, 2022 at 07:23 AM
Roberta--Thanks for the tutorials. It is always good to have knowledgeable friends.
How can I expect to make sense of anything having to do with a system in which the current flows in the direction counter to the flow of electrons? Perhaps the words that you have written about "O" and "|" will stick in my old brain.
Posted by: Cop Car | March 08, 2022 at 10:48 AM
It looks like the screen toggles have been thoroughly addressed, but Bogie I have a question about your red and green dots. Does green mean on or off? Green could mean it is safe to touch and therefore off or it green could mean good to go with whatever the switch is turning on. Kind of like a safety on a firearm. Red means watch out, it is capable of firing.
Posted by: Ingineer66 | March 08, 2022 at 02:52 PM
Ingineer--You have quite neatly demonstrated why I am terminally confused in life: there are too darned many interpretations of words and/or symbols that come to my mind.
My interpretation (let's see if it agrees with Bogie's) of green and red is that green indicates that the system is ready to "go" - in other word "on" - while red indicates that the system is not ready to "go" because it has been/is "stopped" or "off".
Wandering a bit far afield, but akin to your comment about "watch out": A red flag on any control of an airplane (this would be a physical flag, not an electronic flag) means that it is inoperative - do not attempt to use it. In other words, if it is a required control, you cannot legally fly the airplane. If a red flag is on a control that is not required, such as flaps on some aircraft, you may (as I have chosen to do a couple of times) fly the plane but not use that control. To my knowledge, there is no green flag contrary to a red flag.
Posted by: Cop Car | March 09, 2022 at 08:13 AM
Ingineer66 - I think of it like the green and red on a traffic signal. Green is a go (turning on) and red is a stop (turning off). So Cop Car has the same interpretation.
RobertaX - I recently wired a new light in my basement. The instructions say, "connect live wire (black), neutral wire (white) and ground wire (green) . . ." New house wire that I bought last summer has white, black and the ground is bare copper wire which attached to the green light wire. I've only seen the green with yellow stripes a couple of times (on older stuff like my boiler), So now I'm confused about the international colors you mention :D
Posted by: bogie | March 12, 2022 at 06:32 AM
It occurs to me that I've been confused by how others use words and what they mean my whole life. I used to cause my mother consternation because when she told me to "Stop walking pigeon-toed!" I would rotate my toes inward, toward centerline. Somehow, I did not know that I was doing the opposite of what Mom intended. I was well into adulthood before learning that a loaf pan was something in which one might bake a loaf of bread. Somehow, I had thought that a loaf pan was the most-used baking pan in our kitchen, measuring 9"x13"x2.25".
It should come as a surprise to no one that I've spent my life asking others, "What do you mean?"
BTW: I've seen at least one house (wired in the 1930s) with two-wire service (separate wires wrapped in thread) with no color-coding at all. In the 110- and 220-volt wiring that I've done, none of which has been in the past 50 years, I've used Romex with the black/white/bare coding.
P.S. Bogie, what terminology did I teach you, incorrectly?
Posted by: Cop Car | March 12, 2022 at 09:16 AM
I wouldn't be able to tell you what I was taught as a kid versus what I found was incorrect later. There may have been times that I chalked such discoveries as assumptions on my part.
I have to study things over and over, using different resources before I am pretty sure I understand something - then remembering it for more than 2 seconds is the next challenge. Even something so simple as mudding sheet rock - every time I have to rediscover what has worked well for me in the past.
Posted by: bogie | March 18, 2022 at 03:57 AM
Never having flown an aircraft with Antiskid, I don't know how to interpret FFFF on your twin's instrument panel. Please explain (in a PM).
Posted by: Ole Phat Stu | March 28, 2022 at 01:18 AM
I forgot to check back on this thread. I must agree with you all on the green and red thing, but I know that is not universal. Too many confusing things in this life.
Posted by: Ingineer66 | March 29, 2022 at 06:00 PM
As long as the human population is above 1, Ingineer, there will be confusion. HH and I have been trying to communicate since 1956. Ask us how that goes ; )
Come to think of it, HH's and my first communication was probably our most nearly perfect. It was via Morse code. I was on the air from our school's amateur radio station when I received a call-up from an unknown ham who wished me to take get a message to a friend of his who attended "my" school. I may/may not have understood the message to HH's friend, but I did understand what HH wished me to do.
Completing the story: Our next communication was a couple of months later when HH transferred to "my" school and attended a meeting of the amateur radio club. At the time, each of us was dating someone else; but, fatefully, we each broke up with "whoever" over Christmas break and shortly thereafter started dating. By the 1-year anniversary of our first contact we were engaged to be married.
Posted by: Cop Car | March 31, 2022 at 08:13 AM