Your solution with the paddle power switch is six of one and half a dozen of another. The point is that you have looked ahead and realized that there is a need for an immediate full shut down and implemented a solution. The exact means of the full shut down are not as important as the need to have an effective solution in place and ready to go. Your method is as good as any other. My magnetic switch goes one step further with a power outage which I admit is rare. But I dont want to have a power outage and leave my Shapeoko running when the power comes back on.
Several years ago I bought a new house. The garage only had one power outlet for 120. I added a 220 for my table saw and had a light or two and my dust collector running on the single outlet. Luckily I was not cutting at the time but the breaker tripped on my single outlet. I was standing in a pitch black garage with a 3 horse power table saw running, IN THE DARK. After this happened I went and bought an emergency light that comes on when the power goes off. I also got busy and made myself more outlets so not have the power outage happen again.
The point is I realized there was a need to make a change and I made the change. It seems that you also realized you needed a change and you made it. This is how we progress and move forward. Intelligence guided by experience.
Guy, it wasn’t really traumatic… it was more annoying and frustrating because I was trying to click the plainly labelled stop button in a rush and the button wasn’t responding. I’m not following your logic however. Will was making the point that as a safety issue, people shouldn’t be fumbling with a mouse while something dangerous was happening. Ok, provide the hardware stop switch. You are suggesting that someone might accidentally click a software stop button unintentionally and ruin their project and that they should be protected from their clumsiness more than someone accidentally trying to really stop the machine in an actual emergency. I guess I would tell them, in your words, that there are no guarantees in life.
Anyway, my solution wouldn’t necessarily be to have a working software stop button, but just don’t display an inactivated software stop button. Of course I never tried to click it before my incident, because like you said it might ruin my work. But then how does one know that it isn’t active until after you’ve had a situation that needed a stop and only then you find out that it isn’t what it looks to be. I would be just as happy to have only the pause button visible, which does the function most are probably looking for, and only after pause is hit does the stop button appear–and works.
As for the fire extinguishers, airbags and alligators. We’re probably veering a bit off course. The goal isn’t to prevent every possible problem. The goal is to use the company’s extensive knowledge and to use feedback from customers to prevent the most likely problems AND to at least not introduce dangerous or surprising interactions by misleading or surprising UI design. I’ve designed quite a few UI in my day and as you know, every possible customer mistake will be made. The designer’s job is to anticipate the most likely mistakes and to take feedback from users when a UI has accidentally set a trap that is causing many people to fall into.
The feedback from new users, or users who use a functionality for the first time is very valuable in my opinion. Because it is a feedback on the intuitiveness of a piece of software.
And it is usually different from that of those who ‘learned’ the software.
What’s more important? If I understand right, CC/CM is supposed to be an easy to learn CNC software package, to get new user started off quickly. So intuitive usage is important and safety critical aspects and the feedback on them should be taken very serious.
Yes…there are no guarantees…but for programmers, there is no additional effort to make the button invisible rather than disabled - when it can’t be clicked - which would serve the purpose of not presenting a “decoy”. Or, if that violates some sacred coding practice: At a minimum, override the browser’s disabled color and put in a very different looking button when it’s disabled - so no one would ever accidentally try to push the button when it can’t be pushed.
This is such common sense, I’m not sure why it’s needs to be argued!