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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Few miscellaneous suggestions
From:       James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj () acm ! org>
Date:       2004-07-22 21:53:37
Message-ID: 41003761.60409 () acm ! org
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Janne Ojaniemi wrote:
> I have been brainstorming again for ways to improve KDE :). Feel free to 
> agree/disagree as you see fit. Now, I haven't read the archives that much, so 
> I'm not sure that have these been handled yet. Nor have I tried 3.3 betas 
> yet, so if my suggestions are not valid anymore, let me know.
> 
> First of all, the default background. The background you can see here: 
> http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.2/snapshot02.png is the default 
> background, right? I think we should switch to something more toned down. 
> Either a single color or a nice gradient. The default-background is not bad 
> as such, but the default background should be something neutral, and not 
> something "busy". Remember: first impressions matter.

Yes, such "busy" backgrounds ('really cool' backgrounds) tend to give me a
headache. :-)

> The default font seems to be helvetica (at least it has been on my case). Why? 
> They look bad, and AA doesn't seem to work with them. We have some very nice 
> free fonts available (like Bitstream) that look a lot better than helvetica 
> does!

Yes this is a very valid point.  Perhaps the default fonts should be: "Sans
Serif" except for "Fixed width" which should be: "Monospace".

First, I note that there is a bug here: "Monospace" doesn't show up in the list
for: "Fixed width". :-(  Has this been reported??

The problem with using Helvetica (and Courier) is that the Helvetica fonts that
come with XFree86 are NOT scalable fonts -- they are bit mapped fonts -- so you
don't get AA with it. :-(

Using the alias names should result in FontConfig finding a suitable scalable font.

> Universal Sidebar: It could and should be extended. We have already seen 
> Kopete embedded in to the Sidebar. IMO that should be a default option 
> available to the user. Other possibilities include RSS news-feeds (they would 
> fit nicely in to the sidebar), search-tool, To-Do-lists and a calendar. Also, 
> this suggestion in kde-apps seems interesting:
> 
> http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=14353
> 
> Although I'm not sure how to integrate that with some of my suggestions...
> 
> Finding Files.... As I fire up "Find Files" in 3.2.3, what do I see? A really 
> weird button-layout! Why on earth is "about" the first button right next to 
> the textbox? When I tried to find files for the first time, that was the 
> button I instinctively pushed in order to start the search. "about" should be 
> somewhere else, the current location is just about the worst possible 
> location for it.

Yes, this is certainly weird.  The solution to this is to have a Menubar for
Kfind when called as an application (I always use it as a KPart in Konqueror)
and have: "About" and "Help" on the Menubar in the usual manner.  Perhaps the
Menubar should be not visible as the default -- using <F1> will still get help
without doing <Ctrl>M to get the Menubar first.

> Buttons on the Kicker. I think we should have absolute bare minimum there. I 
> personally have four buttons: the K-menu, Show Desktop, Terminal and 
> Konqueror. I do also have the Pager, but I don't categorize that one as a 
> button. Application-buttons (Kmail, Kword etc.) should be removed. They 
> should be accesses through the Kmenu by default, like rest of the apps are. 
> Same thing with help. Konqueror is different, since it's really a central app 
> to KDE, and Terminal is always needed (but I wouldn't lose any sleep if 
> default config dropped it from the toolbar).

Although I have a lot of buttons on Kicker -- I added a child panel at the top
of the screen to hold them (you can get more buttons if you use Size: "Small").
  I agree about the applications not being there by default (except for Help) --
users should choose their own applications.  There are several special buttons
that are useful and these should be considered as defaults.
> 
> I wont talk about Plastik vs. Keramik, since I know the situation there, and I 
> agree with the developers. But, FWIW, first thing I do after a fresh install, 
> is to switch to Plastik.

I have to disagree there.  Perhaps this could be addressed with Kpersonalizer.
I don't like these 'really cool' themes and I think that business users would
tend to agree.  I use the Hicolor Classic style and KDE Classic icons.  We
should continue to fully support these since they are more usable than the
'really cool' stuff and I think that that is what business users would consider
the most usable.

--
JRT

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