On Thu, 2005-02-10 at 21:13, Rod Engelsman wrote: > Mathias Bauer wrote: > > > > > Maybe we are talking about different things here. > > I'm not against changing the text of a dialog if it is not > > understandable (though I still doubt that this is the case here, I can't > > see that "the instructions are broken"). > > But explaining to the user what checking and unchecking of checkboxed > > means is ridiculous.
My "gut" reaction is to agree with you, but in reality I have to agree with Rod. > Not in this case. I'm not really a newbie by any means; I've been using > computers -- mostly Windows -- since about '92. When I first installed > OOo about a year ago, I was a bit taken aback at first when all my blue > "W"s and red "X"s turned into seagulls. I figured out what the deal was > pretty quick but it was something I hadn't really thought about before. > I had just assumed that the icon was derived from the file extension > rather than the file association. I can understand why someone less > knowledgeable would be confused and even panicky at that result. I am not exactly a newbie either, (built my first single board microcomputer "<- does anybody still call them that" back in the early seventies) and played around with SO (pre-Sun) and OOo since their first inceptions. > The dialog text *is* unclear. It can be read two ways: 1) do you want > OOo to *always* open these file types? or 2) do you want OOo to *be* > *able* to open these file types? Today much of my work entails teaching "newbies" (of all ages) the basics of computing and I can tell you from first hand experience (plus many "OOo has taken over my computer" messages on this list) that the majority of inexperienced users read the existing dialog text as meaning: "If you do not tick these check boxes OOo will _NOT_ be able to read/open M$ Office files". > It's important to keep in mind that a fairly high percentage of people > installing OOo are doing so for the first time and they are in > "evaluation" mode to see if the program is any good. Those people simply > don't know yet whether they want to use OOo full time or even at all. > And the user base is moving way beyond the geek and "early adopter" > stages and into Joe and Jane Sixpack. A lot of them don't know much > about how computers work and they aren't particularly interested. They > know how to click that icon or choose this menu item to do something. > Their knowledge is largely empirical. +1 There are threads currently running on this list about how we can promote or raise the profile of OOo. IMNSHO marketing are doing a great job with limited resources. What we need to do is, to make it easy for those folks who have taken the time, trouble and effort to download/buy our software to install and start using it. How we feel personally about the "newbie stupidity factor" is irrelevant. > > The checkboxes in the dialog we are talking about are by no means > > different to others in OOo or other programs. Moreover, nearly every > > graphic viewer I know has a similar configuration dialog where you have > > text at the top that says: "use xxx as a viewer for:" followed by > > several checkboxes, each for a specific graphical format. I never heard > > that this poses a problem to the common user. > > Frankly, I hate it when programs do that. Especially at install time. > Often I simply don't know if I want the program to do those things yet. > It doesn't help that I've probably got a dozen programs on my machine > that can open a jpg. Same for mp3. Graphic and media players can be > downright aggressive that way. It's not a behavior to emulate. > > > My opinion is that the checkboxes should just go away. Devise some way > to set the file associations through the options or tools menu. If the > installer could detect an installation of Word, etc. then I would only > set those associations at install time if the installer *did not* detect > those programs on the machine. I suppose you could skip that step for > other platforms. > > Rod You are talking about a piffling little change in the code (I am also a professional programmer) which would take less than 5 minutes, but would considerably increase the possibility of "newbies" moving on to become OOo advocates. My 2c worth. Dave --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
