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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: kwin default window button order.
From:       Melchior FRANZ <mfranz () kde ! org>
Date:       2007-11-17 7:49:21
Message-ID: 200711170849.21366 () rk-nord ! at
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Given the number of my contributions in the last years I should
better keep my mouth shut, but I can't resist, sorry.  :-)


* Thomas Zander -- Saturday 17 November 2007:
> One extra piece of info;  the tab-close buttons are also on the right, the 
> MS-Windows close button is on the right. So if its all the same to you 
> placing the close on the right and the rest on the left is something that 
> will work best for most people.

That's a rather flawed argument. The maximize button is also on the
right on MS-Windows, and you arguably use that more often on a given
window, than a close button, which you use at most once. And *exactly*
having the dangerous close button on the side where people have all
the other, non-close buttons is a bad idea. (The silly menu dialog
button is really also a window close button. Who uses it for something
different? Not that I've ever placed such an absurd thing on my windows. ;-) 

And I agree with others that MS-Windows isn't even an worthy idol to
follow. Xerox/Apple did their GUI layout as good as they could. And
MS-Windows did it, for legal reasons, as *different* as possible from
this as-good-as-possible. And this is AFAIK the root of lots of the
traditional MS-Windows mis-features:

- the scrollbar handle that is (was?) *not* proportional to the relation
  of the displayed contents to the overall contents height/width
- the wrong order of the [Close][Cancel] buttons (The logical place
  where one normally finishes a page in book in LTR cultures is the
  lower right corner, and that's where one should normally finish a
  dialog. The cancel button is like going back to where you came,
  and that's left. It is in wizard dialogs already, just not everywhere
  else.)
- the bad and dangerous order of windows buttons
- the inability to move maximized windows(?)

So, sheepishly following MS practices doesn't necessarily get you a
good solution. Better do it *right* than do-it-as-ms-does-it. But
then again, as long as it's configurable, I don't have a problem.
The inverted window buttons will make us the laughing stock in
the KDE4 reviews, but that's fine.  :-)

m.
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