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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    RE: kcontrol
From:       "Jamethiel Knorth" <jamethknorth () hotmail ! com>
Date:       2004-07-26 4:05:02
Message-ID: BAY7-F17hbA9N4q8oCD00016a4e () hotmail ! com
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>From: Benjamin Meyer <ben+kdeusibility@meyerhome.net>
>Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 21:54:00 -0400
>
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>Rather than being just another complainer person who says "KControl sucks 
>and
>needs to be better" with nothing constructive to add, I have put together
>some things first.

Great.

>Based somewhat on the already constructed changes by this mailinglist
>contained in kdebase/kcontrol/TODO I have written up first a doc specifying
>the basic grouping along with explanations of what/why.  This type of doc
>never seemed to have existed before which is part of the problem for the
>constant kcontrol changes in the past 7 years (as far back as I know)
>
>http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/kcontrol4/kcontrol4.html
>
>At the same time I played using QtDesigner and a little code and made a 
>mockup
>application:
>http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/kcontrol4/screenshots/mockup.png
>
>Then I actually sat down and fleshed it out quite a bit more to the point
>where it does actually load the kcontrol modules on your system.
>
>http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/kcontrol4/screenshots/
>http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/kcontrol4/kcontrol4.tar.bz2
>
>You can compile it yourself and check it out.  It works just enough to play
>with the system, but probably wouldn't take much more to finish it off.

I'd love to do so, but can't get to Linux for a while, as I'm on vacation 
for another pair of weeks or so. As such, my comments will be based entirely 
on your page and may be completely off-base. If they are off-base, I sorry 
for bothering you with them.


I actually did a somewhat similar design for the overall layout 
(http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/~abreschm/designs/the-control-panel/images/control_center.1.png 
and 
http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/~abreschm/designs/the-control-panel/images/control_center.2.png) 
not too long back, although I only made mock-ups as I cannot program very 
well. What I was trying to work around, only partially successfully, are two 
things which I still see as problems in your design.

First, the control panel is extensible, no matter how bothersome that may 
be. There must be allowances for third-party modules to be added. I did not 
see it addressed in your design document where such additions would go if 
they did not fit into the current areas. For example, what occurs if  there 
are too many icons in a single row to fit into the width of the window? 
Although that likely won't be an error yet, it should be prepared for.

Second, you seem to be using a multi-window approach. I am strongly against 
that for many reasons. Many users are confused by a new window appearing 
once they want to return to the original one. Closing the new window seems 
risky to some people, and it can cause many issues. If that cannot be worked 
around, I don't think there will be as large an improvement in KControl as 
some of us hope. Even if it does get much cleaner, it will have introduces 
new problems into the mix at the expense of the old ones. That isn't to say 
that it needs to be single-window, but I would strongly recommend trying for 
a single-window approach.

As far as other comments on the design, I think that 64x64 is larger than 
the icons actually need to be. When I was doing a mock-up of my design, 
48x48 seemed to be plenty large enough. 64x64 is very large, and only fits 
into a reasonably sixed window if the spacing is fairly small. I would 
rather see wider spacing, so that a user has more rest area for their eye. A 
dense window can be hard to look through, even with relatively few options 
in it.

>I guess the work I have done present two things:
>
>1) A (sort of) formal doc that can be used explaining where modules go.  As
>far as I know know one has bothered to write up something like this.  Feel
>free to point me out as wrong. (no, mailing list archives don't count)
>
>2) A different way of looking at kcontrol.  Someone said it looks like
>something from winXP, but if so that was not intensional and entirely
>accidental.

Actually, it looks a lot like the Mac OS-X control panel, which is not a 
problem. However, the Mac OS-X control panel has some of the same problems 
you have. In fact, if the screen is at a low enough resolution (I think 
800x600 does it) it is technically impossible to reach some options on the 
control panel due to the combination of it having a fixed size and Mac OS-X 
not allowing windows to be moved above the top border of the screen. (That's 
as of 10.1, they may have fixed this since then). 800x600 may be rare, but 
the issue still exists with that particular design.

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