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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Too many elements on the screen
From:       Harijs Buss <hbush () apollo ! lv>
Date:       2002-11-20 17:51:59
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On Treğdiena, 20. Novembris 2002 17:13, b.walter@free.fr wrote:
> I don't know if this problem has already been discussed in the
> mailing-list, but I really think a big improvement for the usabilty of KDE
> would be to decrease the number of items (icon, menu entry, ...) on the
> screen. 
> I know it will be very difficult to correctly face this problem,
> and I also think the microsoft solution (where some items are curiously
> hidden until you click to an arrow) is a bad solution. 

Even more annoying is MS "solution" when only so called "most used" menu items 
are shown and you need to wait while full menu appears. No wonder so many 
people find registry value to get rid of this "adjustment" :-)

I think there are inevitably two things to keep in mind when talking about KDE 
(or another desktop) usability.   

1) There are huge differences between hardware used with all the same KDE (or 
whatever).  Usability of the same desktop layout is very different on small 
14" 800x600 screeen compared to 22" 1600x1200 screen. Large menus which are 
barely usable on a small screen become small neat very usable menus on a big 
screen.  Perhaps there might be several KDE layouts to choose with 2 - 3 
default configurations depending on actual screen  resolution. Same thing 
with CPU speed and disk performance. Delays when Conqueror is opening are 
much too annoying on aging PII 266 machine. But same Conqueror just jumps out 
almost immediately on 2-CPU SMP PIII 933 MHz with good disks and fast 
hardware-accelerated video card. 

It is necessary to understand and write in some KDE specifications docs (if 
they exist)  that technical parameters of machines being used right now can 
differ about 1 - 2 orders of magnitude or even more. It is impossible to make 
KDE solution which will suit anyone working on any machine still alive.  
Therefore I would suggest "nasty thing":  make KDE neat, nice and very usable 
for those people with nice big fast machines, because they are the ones from 
corporate world or successful private business.They have money to pay (and 
they start to do) for big distributions like Mandrake, Red Hat etc. Something 
from this money goes also to some KDE development.  It is necessary to get 
this money to assure that development continues.  For everybody else 
including nice young bright guys/gals with "medium" systems in their 
universities and teenagers with their old "fifth hand" 486 purchased instead 
of two cheeseburgers for the same price, - make subsets. KDE should not 
normally start with all bells and whistles on a small slow machine, at least 
not by default.  Because many people will install it at maximum and then make 
decision "it's too slow, it sucks more than windows". 

2) People are different. It's good, because if they would be all the same it 
would be absolutely boring ;)  BUT: there are at least two big groups (might 
be more).  One (minority) consists of people liking all things changing 
quickly, reorganizing everything with each new subversion, they like let 
system to decide where application windows would be next time they will open, 
and so on. They like world boiling and changing around them all the time.  
Developers obviosly belong mostly to this group (because they like to develop 
and change :) .  

But there are (majority) people, the conservative ones who would  like systems 
behave similarly or at least without big changes, who like to  use same 
application placement forever - might be that this is almost the  same window 
placement they are using since windows 3.1 - and hate even to  move window 
from right side to left each time it opens.  They use systems to  do some 
computerised work. They do not necessarily love systems as such. They  want 
minimum obstacles caused by system in their way to produce spreadsheet A  
until 4 pm today or 3-page document B tomorrow at noon.  They want to know at  
least two weeks in advance that some MDK website will change from ordinary  
codes to full and only Unicode UTF-8, instead of finding out one nasty day  
that this decision was made yesterday evening and many users simply cannot  
login anymore, without any explanations (Well I mention this just as example,  
problem was solved after some letter exchange, but you catch the idea :) 

These are very different behavioural models.  There will be no single solution  
good for both groups. It should be again written in these maybe existing KDE  
specs and taken into account when developing apps.  And - again nasty thing -  
conservative behaviour should be the dominating one because there are much 
more people just using comps to do their work than developers. 

I would suggest defining some usability matrix depending (1) on hardware   
available and (2) desirable behaviour of system.  Probably at least 4 - 6  
typical KDE behaviour classes, with different defaults for each, but fully  
configurable if necessary.

Thanks for reading :-)

Harijs

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