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List:       kde-edu-devel
Subject:    Re: [kde-edu-devel] Usability and Style issues in KDEdu
From:       Chris Howells <chris () chrishowells ! co ! uk>
Date:       2002-04-18 9:44:41
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On Wednesday 17 April 2002 10:11 am, Scott Wheeler wrote:

> *) KDEdu uses a lot more splash screens than the rest of KDE.  I couldn't

Yes.

> find any mention of them in the style guide.  My personal opinion is that

good point. I may bring this up on core-devel some time.

> they're not really useful, but that is *just my opinion*.  The only

I don't really like them either. I think what is needed is some splash screen 
class that needs to be put into kdelibs/kdeui which would provide the 
capability to turn splash screens of globally, although it would be possible 
to turn of splash screens for individula programs.


> *) Things which are "games" should probably use a "Game" menu instead of a
> "File" menu.  This seems to be the standard for things in the games module.

Agreed.

> *) In the apps geared towards younger children it is obvious that some
> elements of the style guide do not apply.  The use of more color, larger
> fonts, etc. would seem to be helpful.  However, it also seems that there
> are several competing ways of attempting to adapt to make the apps more
> useable to kids.

Yes. It would be nice if some libary was created so that the same large fonts 
sizes etc were available for all applications, and all apps could be 
configured at the same time.

> However, it would seem like a goal for future apps should be adhering to
> some as of yet undefined standard.  It seems like even more than in most
> branches of KDE usability should be a concern.  What do you guys think
> about talking with the "kde-look" guys (CC'd on this -- I hope that's the
> right list :-) ) about coming up with a brief KDEdu style guide?  Is anyone
> else interested in something like this?  Then potentially we could try to
> make existing apps adhere to this; possibly by KDE 3.2.  What do you guys
> think?

Sounds a good idea. I think that the style guide should certainly

> Since I'm feeling a little guilty suggesting style changes to apps that I
> didn't help at all with, I'm willing to help with some of the conversion if
> this ends up happening.

> The main thing that I noticed here were the menu labels.  Some of the
> capitalization isn't right.  Oh, great; I just checked it again and most of
> this has been fixed since I tried it yesterday!  Also, looking I see the
> CVS commit from Stephan Binner.  The only one that I still see is
> Configuration -> Numeration -> "off".

Hopefully these will be caught by the proof reading team. However, I do think 
that we need to start being more careful with quality control. E.g. checking 
spellings before putting the app into the module. Spelling/puncuation/i18n 
problems really spoil a program.

> Also, the "Configuration" menu should probably be "Options".  Having both a
> "Configuration" menu and a "Configure Kalzium..." available in the menus is
> confusing.  Alternatively the items currently under "Configuration" could
> probably just be moved to "Settings".

I think the Configuration menu should be removed.

-- 
Cheers, Chris Howells -- chris@chrishowells.co.uk, howells@kde.org
Web: http://chrishowells.co.uk, PGP key: http://chrishowells.co.uk/pgp.txt
KDE: http://www.koffice.org, http://edu.kde.org, http://usability.kde.org


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