[PATCH] support selecting xmlui file in konqy profile

[George Staikos]

I just don't have enough free time right now to write more than 5 email in an 
evening about the existence of a single toolbar button.

On Monday 05 January 2004 21:05, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> i see you didn't respond to any of my observations re: the security lock
> button in the toolbar. am i to assume that this implies you agree/concede
> to the correctness of my counter-points to the 2 main issues you raised
> with regard to that particular button?
>
> On Monday 05 January 2004 04:42, George Staikos wrote:
> > On Monday 05 January 2004 18:30, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > >    Now that I look at it more closely, I don't agree with any of the
> > > > GUI changes, except perhaps the Go button (since it can easily be
> > > > re-added for Kiosk-style operation).  It just adds more clicks to do
> > > > things and hides common actions.
> > >
> > > the actions aren't that common.
> >
> >   I disagree.  I use some of those actions very often.
>
> alright then: which actions do you use, listed in reverse order of
> frequency of use, broken out into 3 groups: hourly, daily and weekly (or
> less) usage
>
> >   I don't see it being overpopulated at all.  KWord, KSpread, etc have
> > what I would call overpopulated toolbars, but this is tradition in such
> > apps, and you know, people learn after a day or two how to work with
> > those quite efficiently.
>
> and yet they work more efficiently with slimmer toolbars. it's a raw fact
> that human beings, in general, can only process so many controls at once.
> you'll see these limits in place all over the things we use every day, and
> you'll see people get frustrated with the things that ignore this fact.
> people, btw, generally dislike modern desktop computer interfaces. no big
> surprise as they tend to ignore the various built-in limits people have.
>
> you are arguing against the realities of most humans. you and i are
> probably not "most humans", fortunately WE know how to add things to our
> toolbars. i'd wager that your toolbar is already different than the default
> (i know mine is).
>
> > > > You
> > > > can even make it part of KPersonalizer: "Do you want fewer features?
> > > > Y/N" Removing features and making it hard to do things is what Gnome
> > > > does, not what KDE does, and IMHO it's really dumb.
> > >
> > > good thing that isn't what this does, then. =P
> >
> >    Being able to click Print instead of hunting through the menus or
> > working through the toolbar configuration is a feature.  Being able to
> > clear the combo at the click of a button instead of via activating a
> > context menu or holding in the backspace key is a feature.
>
> being able to click a button to copy text is a feature, too. but one that
> isn't worth the space it consumes, which translates to an interface that is
> too cluttered to be usable. you are perfectly correct that we can continue
> on having applications that are hard to manage and difficult to teach and
> keep our dozens of buttons all over the place. it is also equally true that
> we can make our applications easy to manage and easy to learn by being
> _careful_ with _what_ we place in toolbars (as one small example).
>
> not everything has to, or even should, be in a toolbar. that is highly
> priced real estate due to its visibility and size. on such a metric, the
> prices of things would go something like this, from most to least:
>
> Document view
> Toolbars
> Menus
> Configuration dialogs
>
> an interesting thing about toolbars is that not only are they one of the
> highest items in value, but as you use them more you diminish the even more
> precious document view space: using toolbars costs more than just the
> toolbar space itself!

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/