[kde]

[Andreas Pour]

Frank Reifenstahl wrote:
> 
> > Usability is not only about making things easy to learn. It is also about
> > making things enjoyable, fun and aesthetically pleasing. The latest number
> > of the ACM magazine "interactions" (July 2002) publishes Donald Norman's
> > article "Emotion & Design - Attractive things work better". Norman writes:
> > "The surprise is that we now have evidence that pleasing things work
> > better, are easier to learn, and produce a more harmonious result." He
> > also explains that affect has a major impact on what products we choose to
> > use.
> 
> First of all, for me usability implies not only aspects of look'n'feel, but
> also or above all whether a desktop/GUI is ready to use at that moment I want
> to use it. So, IMO, stability is a mandatory quality of software which
> suffices high usability claims.

Sure, but, that's you, and, in this world, fortunately, not everyone is
the same.  There are a great many people, who would rather have
something that looks great but is not so reliable (like a Ferrrai ;-)),
then something that is reliable but doesn't look nice.  The simple truth
is, there is absolutely no unanimity on what is important or most
important in life.  KDE handles that by letting you turn all the eye
candy off if you want.  Heck, you can even switch to console mode to get
rid of it all ;-).

> I agree with the "pleasing things - easier to learn" connection and the
> "pleasing things - products we choose" connection. But nowadays mostly
> there's no "pleasing things - high quality" connection, rather the contrary.
> I do know a lot of users enjoying those colourful screens, freezing ten times
> a day or taken in turns by blue screens. Does not work? No matter [pushing
> reset]...

I fail to see how KDE freezes ten times a day, mine hasn't frozen in
months (and when my system has frozen in the past, it's usu. been an X
or Motif bug, and also currently my kernel has APIC problems with my
dual motherboard APIC chip, but that's another story).
 
Moreover, there is no connection, whatsover AFAICT, between the eye
candy and freezing.  I mean, if a style is buggy and freezes your
desktop, that's bad, and you should change styles, but, the bugs that
people complain about, generally are not candy bugs, and the styles are
relatively bug-free.

[ ... ]

Ciao,

Dre
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