On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 13:10 +1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> > So I am recommending a GNOME desktop, of version 2.6 or later. Clean,
> > simple, and easy to use.
>
> I would disagree with the recommendation and suggest to use KDE. It's
> deliberately designed to be similar to windows and will appear to be
> more familiar to computer-illiterate users who are familiar with 9x.
But one the difficulty that the users in question are having is the
ânotion of folders/directories [that] is a bit vagueâ. I am predicting
that the model that Nautilus provides, which is designed with the novice
in mind, will help a lot in this respect. Providing a clone of a system
that the users already have difficulty with may prove to be
counterproductive.
The rest of GNOME works in a very standard way. Radio buttons, check
boxes, command buttons, text-entry widgets, menus and lists operate in
almost the exactly the same way as almost every other GUI, be it KDE,
MacOS or Windows. Besides Nautilus I see two main differences between
GNOME and KDE applications from the user perspective.
1. GNOME applications tend to have fewer preferences than their KDE
counterparts, which is both a good thing and a bad thing :)
2. The default button for dialog boxes is *always* on the right in
GNOME (like the Mac) but it varies under both Windows and KDE
[1].
Novice users should not struggle with either of these two differences.
âAll generalisations are dangerous, including this one.â
â Alexandre Dumas
[1] In Windows and KDE the default button is normally on the left,
except when the dialog is a Wizardâ (called Assistants under
GNOME), when the default button is on the right.
--
Michael JasonSmith http://www.ldots.org/
