multiple wallpapers by default

Adriaan de Groot adridg at cs.kun.nl
Fri May 28 19:27:16 BST 2004


Hi Sean,

Gosh, almost a week with no response that I could see. I'll take up this 
glove.

On Friday 21 May 2004 18:28, Sean O'Dubhghaill wrote:
> >The color change in the pager is, to newbies, not a very clear indication
> > of what has happened. 

Granted.

> > So in both cases, the user is likely to be confused 
> > (he might have open windows in the first desktop, which suddenly seemed
> > to have disappeared). 

If windows have disappeared, then the color change isn't the _only_ thing that 
has changed. Of course, with a single flat background, it may be hard to tell 
"hide all windows" from "change desktop".

> The general conclusion on kde-usability was that a selection of wallpapers
> from: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=10365 would be the
> best to use. Such as bc_blue.jpg, bc_gray.jpg, bc_green.jpg and
> bc_fire.jpg.


I fail to see how additionally changing the color will help alleviate such a 
frustration _unless_ there is a correlation between colors in the desktop 
selector in kicker and the desktop backgrounds - or, for instance, marking 
desktop 1 with a bunch of 1s (corners, edges, middle), 2 with 2s, ... . 
Personally I'd go with a KPassivePopup saying "Desktop n", screen-centered, 
for a second or two. But I'm sure y'all have thought of that already.

> You can check out the usability thread here:
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-usability&m=108410867708086&w=2

I'm somewhat hesitant to go read a usability thread - perhaps you can 
summarize why exactly 4 colors were chosen? What happens to your suggestion 
when a user has 6 desktops, or 12?

-- 
   "On top of that [watching KDE CVS] is interesting in a perverse 
    way, like watching sausage get made. By very smart people." - dkite




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