What Does Zenware Mean?
1. A term used to describe the complexity of software as judged by the user by analyzing the user interface (UI). Software that is simple to use often has a non-cluttered user interface that allows the user to accomplish navigation tasks with minimal number of clicks and distractions.
2. Zenware can be defined as a method of achieving the desired task with minimal software intervention.
3. Zenware also refers to a class of programs that restrict unwanted sub modules of a complex program from executionby disabling features not needed by the user.
Techopedia Explains Zenware
With the advent of feature-laden programs, software engineers make conscious effort to improve the interactivity of the software with the user. For example, when the user wants to delete a file, a pop up window opens and requests confirmation from the user so that the delete operation was not an accidental trigger.
However, as software grows in complexity, the number of assisting maneuvers increases the complexity of the software and causes additional bugs. For example, in high end word processing applications, several pop-ups are designed to cause different actions and interactively process the user requests. For example, the user may use a pop up to set a custom color for text and during this process, prior to color selection; the user may navigate to the main page and type some text. The software has to ensure that the text entered by the user uses the previous font color unless confirmed by the user.
The advantages of using zenware applications are that they require less memory and processing power, they divert all distractions emerging due to other programs, they allow the user to choose which programs can issue notifications and overall enable the user to focus at the task at hand. The only drawback of these application programs is that they need more flexibility like allowing the user to decide what part of a program is being worked on and what other parts of a program can generate interrupts.
