On Thu, 16 Feb 2006, Thomas Winwood wrote: > Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:09:09 +0000 > From: Thomas Winwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Usability] "Advanced" button? > > GNOME has the image in the Linux community of being simplistic or > featureless due to its preference not to add an option for everything > under the sun. Why does GNOME not use an Advanced button to hide pickier > settings keeping the regular user's experience the clean GNOME look > which is desired?
Nautilus. That is a big part of the reason. Previously Nautilus made a lot of use of "Advanced" settings, unfortunately most users ended up wanting to access one or more advanced setting. It was an unmitigated disaster. It is true that in the balance between simplicity Gnome has gone for simplicity first and only now are people really starting to look at ways to add back the flexibility without making a horrible mess. On top of the difficult problem of decided what "Advanced" actually means (or "regular user" for that matter[1]) it can be used as a poor excuse for not making a decision and setting good defaults most users would be happy with. If there are specific features you think we have done a poor job of presenting perhaps you could let us know and we could try and find ways to add more flexibility for those cases without spoiling the simplicity we have at the moment. It is worth noting the recent outburst from Linus were actually in response to a developer who was making the effort to try and expose more functionality in a clean way, and you will often find there is much "work in progress". - Alan H [1] There have been repeated calls for us to figure out who our audience really is and come up with clear Personas and Archetypes of those users to help use when making design decisions. No one has gotten around to it yet. _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
