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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Usable GUI Design...for F/OSS Developers
From:       Christoph Wiesen <chris () deadhand ! com>
Date:       2004-11-19 8:59:21
Message-ID: 200411191004.09995.chris () deadhand ! com
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Am Friday, 19. November 2004 05:28 schrieb alexeijh@westnet.com.au:
> OSnews.com is pointing to a nice article on gui design, usability and free
> software at:
>  http://benroe.com.nyud.net:8090/files/gui.html
>
> He makes a number of good points.
>
> His comments on Fitt's Law, especially regarding window management buttons
> [close, minimise, etc] and scrollbars at screen edges are something that
> have irked me for a LONG time.
>
> I don't know anything about the author but perhaps he should be encouraged
> to help out the kde team.
>
> Lex.
Hi,

he seems to raise some good - though well known points. Maybe it helps to make 
some people notice those things through such an artice - I don't know. About 
the "using the edges" thing: I try telling this to people all the time - but 
overall I think KDE is able to do a decent job at this, though not all the 
KDE defaults take this into account - and many distributions make it even 
worse.

First a windeco that enables this for the windows management buttons has to be 
used. The most obvious is Plastik. Knifty does it too and probably many 
others. Plastik will be default in 3.4 I think.
One very important thing here is that "Allow moving and resizing of maximized 
windows" has to be OFF under Window Behaviour. The more important function of 
this setting (besides making maximized windows static) is that there will be 
no border around maximized windows. 
I hope this will be default soon, I can only try to explain that it actually 
IS a usability improvement when a user can quickly click on the screen edges 
for window management - maybe this article helps.

Second Kicker: The K-Menu should be accessible in the same way, so if for 
whatever reason a distro still chooses to display the left hiding button: 
turn it off. I think this already is KDE default.

Other elements such as the taskbar items are already accessible at the edge of 
the screen - even though there is a one pixel gap between the 
taskbar-elements and the edge (for the looks) you can still click it. I 
suppose the same could be done for scrollbars in maximized windows - removing 
the one-pixel gap visibly might look awkward. Though I have to admit, that I 
never really thought about this scrollbar-issue in the ages of the mouse 
wheel.

About Toolbars: He's right, there are some there than don't need to. But I 
will stick to my opinion that Konqueror has to be a file-manager first till 
the end of all days I guess*. (He's describing it just as webbrowser again 
which makes me itch). Thus I disagree with his opinion on the up-button - it 
is important when doing file management - if done right it should be more 
important than the back button here. But to quickly fix these issues I would 
really suggest to remove the copy, cut and paste buttons, because from all I 
have seen most users - even those used to Konqueror tend to use the context 
menus for this - not the toolbar. New users should not miss the functionality 
(on the toolbar) either. Same I'd say for the print button - it seems rather 
logical to me to search (and find) this under Locations.
There's not all that much else than needs to go in my opinion. There have been 
suggestions about re-positioning the viewmode buttons as a dropdown menu - 
maybe that's good, maybe not - I don't know, but as long as I can remove the 
"View as:" label I guess we're ok there ;)


*I know people will jump on this again, so here's my take:
First experience and most easily confusing is to find your way around the file 
system and actually _use_ your files - the File-Manager is the application of 
choice 8not that many users notice a choice here, it's just there). 
Web-browsing, as important as it is these days - as simple is it. Users are 
used to many different web browsers and all work about the same - even the 
button labels and positions are mostly alike. There's not so much confusion 
about using Konqueror as a web browser than about it as a file manager, where 
users have to manage quite a few more functions - thus there should in my 
view be more consideration towards the FM than it (sometimes) seems there is 
today.
Another Idea is that most users are pretty well capable of switching to 
another web-browser - the alternatives are well known and easily installed, 
or already there. This is not to say "don't like Konqi, use something else", 
but to point out that many users actually will use something else for 
webbrowsing (for whatever reason). But hardly any normal user will use 
something else for file-management. And they probably would not consider this 
since file management is an integral part of the desktop environment. Thus 
more users will use Konqi the FM than Konqi the WB.

Cheers,
Chris
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