A look at GNOME 2.14, comparison to KDE

[Iñaki]

El Lunes, 20 de Febrero de 2006 18:54, Janne Ojaniemi escribió:
> - Konqueror has 4 borders separating the icons from each other. Nautilus
> has one
>
> - For some weird reason, the content-area in Konqueror is framed (notice
> the two dark-gray lines surrounding the content-area). Nautilus does not
> have this framing.
>
> - Notice the lines and borders that separate the sidebar from the
> content-area in Konqueror. Again, Nautilus does not have these.
>
> - Notice the multitude of lines and borders underneath the content-area in
> Konqueror. Again, Nautilus does not have these.
>
> - Notice the KDE-icon in the top-right corner on Konqueror. Again, it has
> lines and borders around it. Similar icon in Nautilus has no such lines.
>
> - Does the Location-bar in Konqueror REALLY need that border around it? No
> it does not.
>
> Seriously, I have no idea why KDE insist that all UI-elements must be
> framed inside lines and borders. It makes the UI look very unsmooth and
> cluttered, while it serves no real purpose. And you can see these
> differences everywhere in GNOME and KDE, so it's not only these two apps.

I completely agree with you.



> Other things to notice:
>
> - Konqueror has nine top-level menu's, Nautilus has six
>
> - Konqueror has 12 icons cramped closely together, Nautilus has 7 (9 if you
> include the zoom/unzoom-icons) icons with lots of space between them.

The problem of whole KDE here is that all are icons and toolbars, all. So in 
this way it's impossible to show a smoother style.

See this preview of Windows Vista:
  http://winvista.sinfreno.com/imagenes/winvista-6.jpeg

Look at the "Back" and "Forward" icons: they are toogether in a beautiful 
style. Is something similar possible in KDE? I've never seen, all I see is 
always an icon for each thing and the only extra-possibility is to set an 
space or separator between two icons.

This problem becomes bigger when using Kparts and the toolbar is modified (but 
it looks similar) so the user simply doesn't understand what occurs. My 
suggestion here is that each Kpart include its own toolbar that is different 
from the Konqueror toolbar (the color, the icons size, it could be behind of 
Konqueror toolbar...). The actual KDE mix both toolbars and for example, 
using Kpdf embebed in Konqueror the user see in the same toolbar two "Back" 
icons and two "Forward" icons (the first ones for the Konqueror navigation 
and the last ones for Kpdf navigation). This is confusing, this is no user 
friendly.



> - Notice the six icons in the sidebar in Konqueror. Nautilus does not have
> them, but they seem to be using a drop-menu instead (the "Informacione").
> Konqueror's implementation presents several UI-elements and makes the UI
> look busy, whereas Nautilus's implementation has only one UI-element
> visible, making the UI less cluttered.

I really don't like the Konqueror sidebar, is really neccesary the "amaroK" 
tab in Konqueror??? or the "KDE FTP" access?? and the "Services" tab with 
Fonts and Printers information??

IMO the sidebar should just show an easy way to access to the user home, the 
devices and the Lan resources, but without using lateral tabs that are 
confusing. "Home", "Devices" and "Lan" is possible all together in the left 
column.

I'm working in an HTML/Javascript preview of my idea of new Konqueror, I hope 
to finish it as soon as possible and show it.





Keep on with such ideas and suggestions.