The stupid toolbox

[Celeste Lyn Paul]

On Monday 03 March 2008 14:35:36 Michael Rudolph wrote:
> On Monday 03 March 2008 20:04:11 Celeste Lyn Paul wrote:
> > On Monday 03 March 2008 13:21:43 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > d) realize that touch screens are going to be a much, much bigger
> > > part of our future and that it would be nice to avoid context
> > > menus. couple that realization with the fact that virtually none of
> > > us are using plasma on a touchscreen in daily usage (afaik?) and so
> > > we would have no other way to effectively test and use it
> >
> > I realise touch screens are going to be a big part of our future, but
> > I don't think we should makes sacrifices for keyboard/mouse
> > interaction defaults because of a smaller audience.  Compromising to
> > that level will only degrade the experience for both groups.  There
> > are enough significant differences between the environments that we
> > should consider a hardware-based profile.
>
> Hi Celeste,
>
> I guess you're right in your prediction that it might still be a long
> time before we see widespread use of touch- and gesture based
> interfaces in opensource desktop software. Because hardware is rare and
> from my experience good opensource drivers for such hardware are even
> rarer.
>
> But if I'm not mistaken, plasma is not just about desktop software, it's
> intended to be usable on many formfactors, such as handhelds and media
> centers as well where such technology is more readily available.

Sure, and that's fine.  But I see no reason why we can't improve multiple 
experiences by fine-tuning defaults based on audience or hardware type.  If 
Universal usability means you have to make sacrifices and compromises to 
cover a larger playing field.  To truly help Plasma shine in a-typical 
environments, customizong the user experience does nothing but help.  Why is 
it so hard?  Are there technical limitations to being able to do this that I 
don't know of?  Or do people just not believe in having specialized 
configurations for different environments?  And not even that specialized, 
just fine tuning the defaults of already existing functionality.

-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project & HCI Working Group
usability.kde.org