GUI's hide the functions you need to use, in remote places

I have for years had trouble with GUI's. For those who don't know, a GUI is a graphic user interface and is what you nearly always see these days when you open a program. I have trouble with them. I have scoured the net looking for others with my particular difficulty and have found little comment and nothing organized. So I have decided it is time for someone to speak up. This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of articles on the trouble with GUI's. Mostly it will be rants about the difficulties. If I am successful, it will also include a few solutions to the problems I describe.

The things you need to know about are hidden behind GUI's and you have to go through one two three or more buttons, menus drop-downs etc to find them, if you can find them. When you look at a GUI all that is there at the start is a few buttons, links and menus in a grey (or sometimes colorful) screen. Grey does not convey much neither does color. So where do you look for the function you need. Well you have to start going through each menu, drop-down, button and link to find it. You are likely not to recognize it when you do. It often won't have the name you expect it to have. And it may be some obscure little check box off in the corner of some obscure screen, many levels deep in your search, by which time if you actually reach that screen you may be so tired of looking at screens or just tired in general that you don't have the mental energy left over to notice it as it goes by. The number of places to look for something often makes this a gargantuan task, and then once you've found it you have to go through the same process again for the next thing. Think of having to search a disordered library without an index for a single book by having to read the title page inside every book until you come to the right one. Then consider that there may be a closet that you don't know exists with even more books. This is what I face every day when I use GUI's.
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GUI's could have indexes. Web sites often do, or they use Google. We who build GUI's can do this too.

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