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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: embedded viewer vs external program
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () olympusproject ! org>
Date:       2003-02-28 3:08:03
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On Thursday 27 February 2003 07:46, Maks Orlovich wrote:
> > extremely true with 0.9 confidence.  All windows users and mac users
> > DON'T work according to the konqueror's current way.

here's a few gedankenexperiments to try:

 o Because 100% of desktop users had never used a dialog sheet, Apple decided 
it was too risky to introduce them in MacOS X because they assumed rightly 
that users expect dialogs to be separate modal windows. 

 o Because all web browsers are SDI, Opera (or whomever did it first) decided 
that users wouldn't be expecting tabs or know how to use them in relation to 
web surfing and so decided not to implement them.

 o Because 99% of desktop users had never used a GUI, Apple had not put one 
out as the default interface for its Mac in 1984 since they assumed rightly 
that virtually no users knew how to use a mouse, let alone a WIMP interface 
driven by one.

there are many more such examples. new is not bad; bad is bad. new can be bad 
when it is new for newness' sake and offers nothing (or little enough to be 
nothing) in return. cf GNOME's infamous dialog button switching for an 
example of that in our own backyard. but new can be good if it provides 
compelling benefits and the user is supported properly through the change.

in the three examples i noted above, the user was either helped by 
introductory materials designed to get them over the learning curve hump 
and/or by being so obvious in use that such a thing wasn't necessary.

i know that often when i say, "just because some other system has done it 
doesn't mean we have to" many people on this list interpret that to mean that 
i think kde should be indignantly unique and different, or that i suffer from 
NIH syndrome in a big way. but that's not why i say such things; rather, the 
above reasoning is. 

those who are afraid to innovate will be left behind to chase tail lights 
until they are rendered irrelevant.

> Yes, but the current KDE users do. And they're, IMHO, the most important
> users out there. In fact, I think it was a big mistake to switch the
> embedding to off by default for many mimetypes in 3.1....
>
> Just a few days ago we got a wishlist asking for kwrite to be embeddable
> for viewing text files, BTW -- something that was a default for ages.

yes, this annoys me as well... all the more reason to do it right for 3.2 so 
we can get things back to "normal".

- -- 
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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