Relevancy of Preferences KCM

[Torsten Rahn]

On Monday 16 February 2004 01:06, Frans Englich wrote:
> I was thinking about the Preferences KCM(in "Internet & Network"),
> shouldn't it be ok if we just settled for sensible defaults and then
> dropped the KCM?

What I find particularly distractive in this dialog is this odd KDE invention 
of the stupid QSlider/QSpinBox combo. I know it's well-intended by the person 
who invented this beast but judging from the appearance it looks like TWO 
controls instead of ONE. So on the first glimpse it's rather irritating and 
gives the user the overwhelming impression of "too many controls to deal 
with, too much to configure and way too many options" (after all: on which 
technical device that is said to be very easy to use have you ever seen _two_ 
controls next to each other to adjust _one_ single property?).

Generally a QSlider should be used if: 
- the value of a property doesn't tell the user very much and is beyond their 
experience (so the user actually thinks in term of "rather high" or "rather 
low"). OR
- if the value range is very wide (Timeout for KuantumWarpEngine: 1-4000 ms, 
e.g. so that working with a qspinbox instead would be rather uncomfortable)
 
Instead a QSpinbox should be used if:
- one can safely assume that the user is able to tell from experience which 
particular value he should choose (e.g. screensaver appears after 3 mins).
- if the range consists of very few valid values (1-9 e.g.).
- if in a wider range it's critical to choose a particular value instead of 
the value next to it, so it's really about that particular value instead of a 
"rather high" or "rather low" thing.

Using both controls for one single property is just laziness of the developer 
to judge which of those the user might actually use most of the time or it's 
a mislead generosity of offering everything and the kitchen sink instead of 
something that is easy to recognize and straightforward to use.

If you really want something that isn't visually obtrusive then replace this 
combo by those spinboxes which you find in image manipulation software (like 
Photoshop) where a tiny unintrusive slider appears just on the edge below the 
spinbox only once you start to edit/change the field.
Otherwise I'd recommend to replace this stuff either by QSliders or 
QSpinBoxes.

Regards
Torsten Rahn
  

> AFAICT, everyone should be fine with the timeout values and also passive
> FTP. Dunno about "Mark partially uploaded files".
>
> What do people think?
>
> Cheers,
>
> 		Frans