KDE (vs GNOME)

[David Johnson]

On Thursday 17 November 2005 07:01 pm, Michael Pyne wrote:

> Well, when I talk about a KTweakUI, I mean something on the lines of
> the TweakUI created by the Windows Shell Teams.  TweakUI wasn't a
> gconftool, it was instead an application that would tweak options
> that were available to advanced Windows users but were not exposed
> through the normal GUIs.

The TweakUIs I am familiar with all had/have necessary options in them. 
IIRC, you used to need it in Win95 to turn on font anti-aliasing. Now 
with WinXP you need it to turn off autorun/autoplay. Putting important 
options like this in a separate interface is bad idea.

> For that matter I don't think user levels are a great idea.  The best
> suggestion I've heard so far for adding an "Advanced" button was to
> have a "Infrequently used options" button or something to that
> effect.

I don't consider an "Advanced" button to be a user level, as it is 
always present and available. Of course, I've seen bad implementations 
of this, but the idea is sound. Keep the button unobtrusive and out of 
the way, and it won't offend people's sensibilities.

Basing options on popularity (I mean user studies) is insufficient. The 
game Family Feud is about people trying to guess the audience's most 
popular answers. It is surprising how rarely contestants are 
successful. The problem is that everyone is different. 
Popularity/frequency is important, but it must be combined with old 
fashioned common sense.

-- 
David Johnson