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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Interesting interview with UI designer Jef Raskin
From:       Benjamin Meyer <icefox () mediaone ! net>
Date:       2002-03-03 1:46:10
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Back in high school we used to do this all the time in the computer labs to 
signify that it was our machine.  We woud set everything we could find to 
black in win95.  From the background, to tools.  Then we memorized how to fix 
it using key commands.  The sys admin didn't mind sense the computer was only 
used for the c++ class anyway.

-Benjamin Meyer

Yes our "weekly" programming project was always finished on Monday leaving us 
with plenty of time.  Heck the last half of the year was mostly spent playing 
quake.  3 out of 6 of us that tried (for months) were able beat Quake1 on 
nightmare _without_ dieing.  It took a *long* time, but hey it was fun.

On Saturday 02 March 2002 09:19 am, Emerald Arcana wrote:
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> - From the article:
> ~~
> Jef: I remember one client of mine who boasted about his customizable
> desktop and how he never had to reboot his software. I set the system font
> to red and the background to red. You couldn't see a thing. He spent a few
> minutes trying to find and open the now-invisible menus that would let him
> change one of the colors.
>
> He had to reboot. His system was good in that it automatically saved the
> user preferences, so it came up red on red. He had not only to reboot, but
> to reload the software, losing all his demo data.
> ~~
>
> What a bastard!  This has to be one of the meanest thing I've read in a
> long time.  Is he saying that if no one was allowed to customize options,
> then stuff like this wouldn't happen?
>
> Back to Usability.  The guy has a point... yes.  Obviously skins that
> change stuff beyond recognition are not good.  Inconsistency is not good
> (which is why we're sticking for toolbar menus in the right order, etc). 
> Skins aren't the best thing in the world: I usually don't skin my
> applications, and I generally don't think that most KDE apps should
> implement skinning code. NoAtun for a while had this odd UI that no one
> could understand due to skins (I don't know if it still does because it
> doesn't run on my sytem).  But if they already have skinning code... well.
>
> As far as the red-on-red stuff goes, maybe there can be a command-line
> script (maybe NCurses-based) or a "bare-bones uncustomizable" recovery
> application that rolls back a "validated" version of your KDE config files.
>  That way, if you screw anything up, you can restore it easily. 
> Alternately, you could also (perhaps) use it similar to a "configuration
> manager" if you're inclined to want to use different configuration settings
> for KDE.... but its primary function would be a Config File Recovery Agent.
>
> Okay.  I'm going to send this to myself to make a note....
>
> BTW, If anyone's hopped onto the Talkback board, there's a whole schpeil of
> angry responses about this article.
> - --
> - -- Arcana
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