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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Yet another desktop BG dialog
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () olympusproject ! org>
Date:       2003-02-20 5:23:55
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On Wednesday 19 February 2003 09:48, Keunwoo Lee wrote:
> dialog, and the mockups posted to kde-usability in the past couple of
> months, share the problem pointed out in the report: namely, the modal
> relationship between "wallpaper" and "color" is not clear.

in KDE the wallpaper and color settings are not modal. they are combined 
according to the blending option. it isn't either/or, it's both/and (unless 
the user says no to one or the other, of course)

if we want to make it bleeding obvious, we could put a checkbox "Use 
wallpaper" and "Use colors" in each groupbox that toggled on/off all the 
items in the group boxes and remove the <None> entry from the wallpapers 
combobox, the No Blending item from blend groupbox and only activate the 
Blend group when both picture and colours are activiated. i'd just be worried 
about vertical height for 800x600 resolutions.

i'd like to keep this dialog both simple and clean, though. user testing is 
welcome.

> BTW, IMO the blending, pattern, and external program options are esoteric
> enough that kdesktop would not suffer too much if you dropped them
> entirely. 

it isn't kdesktop that would suffer, it's the users who have come to rely on 
those features. "rely" is a bit of an odd word to apply to something as 
non-vital as wallpapers, perhaps, but many, many people use both of the 
things you ask to do away with. we've deep-sixed much more trivial items from 
the UI and i've heard no end of the complaining for an amazing number of 
people. i can only imagine the number of the users removing something as big 
as blending would annoy.

we need to be interested in not only giving our users a usable interface but 
also giving them an interface that has enough (of the right) features to be 
addictively wonderful. people want both, and life is tough.

> Any user who wants to run xearth as their background can figure
> out how to do it him/herself. 

it's on the advanced tab does it need to be more hidden than that?

>  If it's around 1%, then is it worth uglifying the control panel for the
> sake of these features? 

yes.... how many people set their background image at all? of those, how many 
use the various features and how many have difficulties with the different 
parts of it? this dialog only affects those people who actually set their 
backgrounds, who are already probably in the minority.

> People who are extremely
> obsessive about their background image can fire up the GIMP and roll their
> own. 

the assumption is that only the "extremely obsessive" use blending. do you 
have any data to back this up?

andeven though i'm apparently extremely obsessive ;-) i have never "rolled my 
own" and probably never will. i use blending because it's easy, not because 
i'm a graphic designer. (or obsessive ;)

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE: The 'K' is for 'kick ass'
http://www.kde.org       http://promo.kde.org/3.1/feature_guide.php
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