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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: KPersonalizer (was Re: Support for animated icons (on mouseover))
From:       Ralf Nolden <nolden () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-01-17 9:41:07
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On Thursday, 17. January 2002 10:10, Chris Howells wrote:
> On Thursday 17 January 2002 4:59 am, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> > Normally you would put a "Apply" button there, but in this case maybe a
> > "Try it out!"-button would be appropriate.
>
> What's the reason for such inconsistency? "Even" though KPersonalizer is
> meant for the newbie the first time they run KDE, I don't really see why
> such hysterical and patronising (IMVHO) wording is appropriate in
> KPersonalizer.

Well, to add my mustard to the discussion, I really don't know what it is all 
about...I haven't gotten any bad feedback on the usability or whatsoever. 
Maybe we should all make a "test with mom and pop" weekend with various 
issues that we don't like ourselves and see how the unexperienced user for 
whom that is thought sees things.

See, my cousin for example. She's been working with mainframes in the 80's, 
but nowadays she's just a normal Windows user. Now, for reading and writing 
emails, she does that with Outlook Express, which automatically opens an 
internet connection. I told her that she doesn't need her machine to be 
connected all the time to write an email, she could do that offline and then 
press the send button which invokes the dialup then to send and receive. She 
couldn't beleive it that that really works that way and it even saves money. 
That's what reality looks like, we're sometimes way too far top-notch 
technically to see what the real user really thinks when using our stuff.

Test the stuff with friends who aren't in computers. Get mom and dad to your 
machine and make notes, ask specific questions later, just watch carefully 
how they do it and if they ask *any* question (which would mean they're 
stuck) or how their face turns. Are they taking longer than 3 seconds to 
figure out what a new popped up dialogbox is intended to do ? What do they 
look at first ?  Those are the important things, not to overcustomize every 
function that could be there (wizards can be very confusing the more buttons 
they have on the bottom besides cancel, next and forward).

Anyway, if the personalizer would be started before the session starts that 
may be a good idea, but then again the user wouldn't see how good the default 
of KDE looks and stay with a windows setting :))

Ralf

-- 
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Ralf Nolden
nolden@kde.org

The K Desktop Environment       The KDevelop Project
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