KDE4 HIG issue: search/filter bars and the clear button

Leo Savernik l.savernik at aon.at
Thu Mar 2 20:46:05 CET 2006


Am Donnerstag, 2. März 2006 00:23 schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
> On Wednesday 01 March 2006 12:39, Leo Savernik wrote:ss
>
> >  Certainly mmb-pasting is an advanced feature,
>
> thank you for beating me to this very important point. i will add one
> refinement: it's an advanced feature in the sense that "few people use it"
> not in the sense that "it does something powerful and unique".

So usability is actually about: "If few people use it, remove it."?
>
> what i find REALLY funny about the "advanced feature" argument in this case
> is that if you REALLY want MMB paste to be fast in konqi ... middle click
> in the content area. that's 2 clicks better than the clear button. how's
> that for advanced features? (firefox does this too, btw)

I know, but you're mixing different use cases. If one wants to *open* an url 
quickly, one may well mmb-paste directly into the content-area. However, if 
one wants to *edit* an mmb-pasted url, one *has* to paste it into the 
location bar. But lacking the clear-button you can't preserve the primary 
selection without going through great strides.

And pasting and editing urls is really only used by very few people, so, 
according to the usability rules, it should be removed?

>
> >  but usability isn't about
> > making the advanced users' lives harder.
>
> the "advanced user" can add the button to their toolbar. 

At the price that all toolbar customisations are lost on each rc-version 
upgrade. So the advanced user is punished every time he upgrades KDE.

> or we can even 
> provide a "Power User" web profile.

This looks like a good solution at the first glance, but effectively resembles 
an introduction of user levels through the backdoor. The typical problem with 
diverting-from-default settings is that they tend to become unmaintained 
quickly and totally break within two or three minor releases.
>
> but having KDE default configuration optimized for 1% of people and
> unoptimized for everyone else is a bit insane. granted, it's not always so
> obvious and clear a demarcation as this item is, but that is IMHO the
> truth.

I can't follow the argumentation that a small clear button makes the ui 
"unoptimised" for 99%.
>
> if most people don't use it _and_ it has negative side effects by being
> there (both true in this case AFAICS) then it ought to be demoted.

The only bug to be fixed is the line edit not deleting the undo-history on 
clear. That removes the dataloss issue completely.

mfg
	Leo


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