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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Real Usability Problems and Stuff
From:       Irwin <emerald-arcana () rogers ! com>
Date:       2002-06-22 4:36:07
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If anyone needs a roving ground for users, look on KDE-linux or other similar 
lists.  There are a lot of people who complain about KDE and how it doesn't 
work over there.  (If software all worked perfectly, Linux mailing lists 
would disappear.)

It's basically real problems by real people.  Here's some stuff I found there.

~~

If we want to "minimize" the amount of actions for something like in KControl, 
here's a good step-by-step analysis:

Lan Browsing with Konqueror

Make sure Samba and LISa are installed from the CD. Go into YAST2, system,
run level editor and make sure smbfs is running and lisa are running. If
not, set them for run level 3 and 5 and start them from the run level
editor.
 
In control panel, Network, select Windows shares, put in your logon and
password.
In control panel, Network, select Lan Browsing, set up the Lisa Daemon using
the guided setup. I put in the name of the DNS server, it automatically came
up with my IP address and mask.
After doing the setup, then click the "Apply" button. 
Then go to Konqueror and in the address box type in "lan:/" It should then
show all of the network computers as IP address. 

(Note: maybe combine WIndows shares and LAN Browsing?  People tend to browse 
their windows LANs)

I then pinged the computers by name, got their ip address, clicked on the IP
address in Konqueror, then the SMB foldler. I then bookmarked that, then
changed the bookmark name to the computer name.

(Sounds awfully complex just to get a computer's name in the folder... perhaps 
the default name should be the hostnames, and not the IP addresses.)

~~

- -Someone asked if it was possible to use Alt-Printscreen to take a snapshot of 
the current window into the clipboard.  It might be a good idea to see if 
this is possible.  KSnapshot, if possible, should save to a file but also 
take a clipboard copy of the image so the user can paste it.

~~

A user can't change the background image in Konqueror:

> >My regular user has the default background but the super-user file manager 
> >root has a bright yellow background to remind me or who I am.  I did the 
> > same with kconsole.
>
> That's what I did! But it still works for the current dir. Changing dir,
> the original background is displayed until I return to the dir I changed
> the background.

Try changing to your home directory, setting the background, and choosing 
Window->Save View Profile "File Managment".  IIRC this will work.  

~~

Lack of  documentation, but apparently this user is pretty saavy to figure it 
out on his own:

The Kate Document menu contains an entry "KDE Scripts" that is not documented.  
What are "KDE Scripts"?  Where can I find out how to write/use them?

...

Please ignore above post on scripts.  I just noticed the kate/scripts 
directory.  They are just bash scripts.  Sorry.  But, what a neat thing to 
know.  I think I'll write my own print command.

~~

Sorry, I didn't really say anything important in this post, but if anyone was 
interested in seeing some of the "real problems" that mid-level/upper-level 
computer users face, the KDE troubleshooting lists are where to look.  It 
might be more motivating to see what problems people actually have rather 
than to discuss problems that we often SPECULATE that people have.

THe problem with browsing the KDE troubleshooting lists is that there's a lot 
of feature questions, a lot of installation questions (leading more and more 
to the belief that a custom GUI installer or custom installation script is 
important), a lot of distribution-specific questions (mostly from Redhat, 
Mandrake, and SuSe), and a lot of "this doesn't work" questions.  While all 
of those are usability issues, they're not quite in the problem domain we're 
studying.

Apologies for the "theory post", but I felt that this was an interesting 
observation.

- -- 
- -- Irwin 
(Arcana)

P.S.  Make KMenu icons BIG, please!
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