💡 Understanding hooks: easy for some, initially more difficult for others

/ Pleasant and Thought-Provoking, Tips and Tricks / By /

I find it fascinating that given two equally intelligent, technically minded people, one of them will immediately understand the concept of “hook”. In contrast, the other one will take a while to understand it.

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What makes understanding hooks difficult for some?

  • hooks are created and shown in an ephemeral popup window;
  • unlike products with similar UIs (Spotlight and launchers), this window is context-sensitive;
  • hooks are two way-links;
  • no other product uses the cross-app notion of two-way links, so it’s unfamiliar;
  • hooking is a two-step process: Copy Link + Hook to Copied Link (unless one uses the Hook to New command)
  • hook is a relatively abstract concept

However, once a user gets the idea (that “ah ha” moment), creating and using hooks becomes as simple as creating folders in Finder. Creating hooks is as fundamental a skill in one’s information management toolkit as creating folders.

So, I wrote 💡 What’s a hook? to explain the concept.