Gnome Article on UI Design on /.

[Thomas Zander]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 03:47:39PM +0200, Alexander Kellett wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 03:03:37PM +0200, Thomas Zander wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 02:30:15PM +0200, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> > > On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 12:13:05PM +0200, Alexander Kellett wrote:
> > > > Which reminds me. I'd agree here but for one thing, windows has a 
> > > > nice gui regedit program. How about adding one to KDE but going one
> > > > step better? - by adding comments to all the configure options.
> > > > 
> > > i'm very much in favor of such thing.
> > Besides the fact that I am not; it kind of overshoots the target by 200%
> > since we want to limit the configurability of software, adding a not-so
> > userfriendly interface to the config options does not limit the developer
> > in making up configuration options.
> 
> I'd really have to disagree here. KDE will not make it if it can not be
> applied without a lot of pain to other peoples way of working. If it forces
> you to work in a certain way then KDE imo will begin to suck immensely.
> I don't really wish to be dumbed down to the lowest denominator.

Which seems to be a common argument; I do _not_ say we should all work the same,
this is in fact the black and white view that the originally quoted /. article
points to. There are far too many config options, that is what is wrong. 
Allowing the addition of options while not adding a GUI option is not that much 
better, but adding a GUI for options that have not been added to the GUI is 
just silly.


> > I have not yet seen a auto-generated userinterface that is understandable
> > without a lot of documentation. kdcop is a good example of where the mixing
> > of datatypes with user input does not work.
> 
> Agreed. It will be difficult to get it right, but in the end it 
> will save devels time (GUI options are annoying to have to write) 
> and remove confusion in the preferences by allowing much more to
> become advanced options.
> 
> Earlier on in the thread a "more >>" button was discussed. It would
s/button/tab/

-- 
Thomas Zander                                            zander at earthling.net
The only thing worse than failure is the fear of trying something new
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