On 24/01/2005, at 08:06, Daniel Carrera wrote:
If
everyone expects to see "File > Exit", it would be *bad* to remove the
Exit entry from the File menu and put it under a new "Program" menu, even
if "logically", a "Program" menu would make more sense.
You are talking about Windows/Linux here. One of the annoying things about the X11 version of OpenOffice under OSX is the fact that "Exit" is under the file menu, and not under the program menu. Even worse- the program menu you see when running under OSX is the program menu for X11, *not* for OpenOffice.
Sigh. Too bad that NeoOffice/J has many bugs the "regular" OpenOffice.org doesn't have (yes, yes, I am reporting them, don't worry...)
Gnome has an interesting way to approach this. Each application has a preferences window, but it's always very simple, very minimal. Only the 10% of the entries that 90% of the people want.
"But what about the other 90% of the options?"
The other 90% is still available, but it's well hidden behind a tool
called "GConf". This tool has a massive list of every option imaginable.
So the options can still be set, but they don't take away from usability.
Yep, that is one of the major reasons I prefer gnome over KDE. Although I am a power user, I still tend to get lots in KDE's preferences, while in Gnome I find that the preferences I change often are right there in CUI, not cluttered by other stuff, while the things I change rarely are easily accessible via gconf. Mozilla applications have a similar approach with the user.js file in the profile folder, where you can set advanced hidden prefs (or use about:config in the browser window).
However, in order for this approach to work, we need to have good and well thought out defaults in the first place, which isn't an easy thing to have.
---
Shoshannah Forbes
http://www.xslf.com
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