On Friday 21 February 2003 9:14 am, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> >> What you are asking for is clearly based on a KDE centric point of
> >> view..
> >
> > No, I think that it is based on the most customization possible point of
> > view. The reason that it seems to be KDE centric is because it *has* the
> > ability to be customizable.
>
> About customizations, I suggest you read Havoc article :
>
> http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html
A very good article that backs up what you have been saying in some areas and
supports what a few of us have been saying in others.
I quote:
"So how is the decision [to add a preference] made? It's a judgment call. I
try to go through some questions like these:
1. Ask questions to find out what's really bugging someone who requests a
preference. What is the annoyance or inefficiency that prompted them to ask?
2. Can said annoyance be made to go away for all users without requiring a
preference? If so, just do that. You may have to think about the big picture
of the UI to figure out how to make it Just Work.
3. Is the annoyance or inefficiency really significant, or did it cost them 1
second doing something that users do once per week on average? If it's just
some trivial thing, then the extra feature or preference probably costs more
than it's worth, even if you can't make things Just Work.
4. Does any other OS have this feature or preference? I'm all for innovation,
but if no one else is doing something, you should think it through twice to
be sure there isn't a reason they aren't doing it. If you're appropriately
humble you'll probably find that a lot of thought and user testing has gone
into the currently popular platforms."
The only question that we can't answer yes to is number 3, if it is trivial or
not. I think that all the others we can say with a fair degree of certainty,
yes. In the case of number 4, other OSes having this feature, I would say
that most of them do have the abiltity to look the same across almost all
apps when you change the color of the widgets.
The main reason I am pushing this is I have seen what people said about
Redhat's BlueCurve. It was lambasted in some circles solely for the color
customization issue, I don't want the same to happen to Mandrake's Galaxy.
If you are going to make things look the same, then you should probably make
sure that they *always* look the same. The first time Linux user who goes
into KControl and selects a different color scheme and finds their Gimp
looking very out of place is going to get a bad impression of what Linux can
do. "Windows handles color changes without a problem." The only way to
really "fix" the issue is to pull the color settings module from KControl,
not a good option at all, or make it so that the color scheme is the same
between GTK and QT. Does this make any sense? Or am I just talkin' outa my
ass?
--
Bret Baptist
Systems and Technical Support Specialist
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Internet Exposure, Inc.
http://www.iexposure.com
(612)676-1946 x17
Web Development-Web Marketing-ISP Services
------------------------------------------
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
