Usability and Open Source Software

Martin Soto writes "This article by two user interaction researchers, discusses many of the usability problems in current open source projects. The nice part is that, unlike many /. readers, it doesn't stop there, but goes into suggesting novel (at least for the OSS community) approaches to cope with those problems in an open source compatible way. Worth a read to those that, like me, still think that OSS should find its way to every desktop computer."

Comments

How does "openness" affect useability?

[Ars-Fartsica]

There may be a connection. A closed project allows one person to impose their will religiously throughout an interface. Open source ultimately is about concessions and cooperation, which may negate this type of centrist control.

On the other hand, the general trend of open source is to follow the leader in the most positive way possible. If someone builds the perfect UI, open source folks will copy it sooner or later.

Where are the forums and groups for usability?

[fremen]

I posted this question in a K5 diary, but I'll post here as well. Where are the usability forums for open source software? Who's working on this? Is there a webpage or a discussion group? Something on Usenet perhaps?

Who's working on the "cutting edge" window manager of the future? Where are the groups playing around with their pet interface projects? This is open source, there should be hundreds of different user interface projects floating around. Most of them would be horrible, but it's that open development spirit that condenses bad ideas into really really good ones.

I'm legitimately interested in working on this problem, but I've never discovered places where people ask serious questions about usability. So now I'll post the same question here, where is good usability and GUI stuff happening?

Re:As they mention, OS X has shown a way

[WillAdams]

Except that the usability, consistency and elegance of NeXTstep has been sacrificed to appease the Mac faithful's absolute assurance that the Macintosh Way is the one true way.

Scroll bars are on the wrong (right) side, so using NeXT's wonderful Miller column browser becomes an awkward back and forth burlesque for broad directory structures w/ lots of entries

Monolithic main menu, no pop-up right-button main menu (and the contextual menu is all-too sparsely populated most times) which can become gestural in nature with sufficient usage (Altsys Virtuoso - right click, Arrange | Path Operations | Punch is a single flick of the mosue for me ;)

No tear off sub-menus---in NeXTstep one can customize the UI by strategically tearing off and placing sub-menus (need to print a bunch of Envelopes? Install Poste.app, open one's word processor, tear off the Services menu and position it so that ``Print Envelope'' is at (say) the bottom left corner of the screen---you can get to it with a single flick of the mouse and a click).

Carbon implementations drag UI expectations down---all too often they don't support Services, File Filters &c. Sometimes not even Quartz live-window drag / re-size

Verbose Mac-style menu shortcut descriptions which use weird symbols which aren't even consistently on all Apple keyboards (NeXTstep, Save == s, Save As == S; Mac OS X, Save == S, Save As == S)

Dumbed-down print dialog box w/ no Fax or Save (PostScript) buttons

File dialogue boxes which no longer support tab completion, filename selection to populate the filename text field, or automatically creating a path of folder(s) in which to save a file

And altogether too many apps haven't made the transition yet---I still want replacements for NoteBook.app, Lotus Improv / Quantrix, TouchType.app, Altsys Virtuoso (and don't point me at Illustrator or FreeHand, the UI for the former disappoints me, the latter isn't sufficiently integrated w/ Mac OS X, no Services, &c.), TeXView.app (TeXShop is quite nice, but lacks the IPC (inter-process communication) which made InstantTeX possible---EquationService.app isn't supported by a lot of apps too, so isn't as useful as TeXView.app's TeX Eq -> eps Service), Webster.app, Digital Librarian (MT Librarian is close, but crashes when I try to index texmf's doc tree), Digital Shakespeare, Oxford's Book of Quotations and TypeView.app

I've some information on NeXTstep and its UI on my personal pages at http://members.aol.com/willadams but GNUstep sadly lost GYVE, so improving on NeXTstep / Altsys Virtuoso seems rather remote at this time :(

William

Re:Never shall the two meet....

[grumpygrodyguy]

I'll probably get modded into oblivion for posting this, but I wanted to chime in. I've got two boxes running side-by-side, one running Suse and the other Win98(games box). What I've noticed is that I've been spending more and more time using the windows box.

I thought it was just a distribution problem), and since so many people here on Slashdot rave about Debian I thought I'd give it a try. Especially since PGI(progenies graphical installer) is now 1.0.

So I actually bought a CD burner from E-bay for the sole purpose of burning the new debian-woody-pgi ISO to a CD so I could install debian. The drive arrived 2 days ago, and works like a charm. I burned the ISO to disk yesterday, and tried the install 3 times before I could even get the installer to start(My router has DHCP enabled, but for some reason the installer couldn't find it). Then X wouldn't run because the PGI ISO has ancient drivers(I have a GeForce4). But I had a command line right?...just ftp and get the drivers, np. Except ftp doesn't work. I can't even ping(yes, I did a remote install...which worked fine! guess debian just forgot how to connect after it installed...*sigh*). So then I tried using the other box (Suse) to write the drivers to a floppy and then copy them to the Debian install. Except...well...after 2 hours of trying to figure out how to mount the floppy drive I find out that I can't write to the floppy because I need to format it in ext2. Fine (grrr)

I use google and find the fdformat command and format the disk...except...that doesn't work either(for whatever reason). So fine, I'll just remove the Geforce 4 and swap in my old SIS card, do the install, then get the drivers and re-configure X. Sure that will work(30 mins later) X starts! Then I switch over to my Suse box to search around for HOWTO's etc (I use a KVM switch to share the monitor) and when I switch back, my mouse no longer works...and niether does the webbrowser.

After about 10 hours of this I just lost it. I have wiped the disk, and am now in the process of installing windows on both machines. I will probably never use linux again.

Don't get me wrong, I love using Mozilla and Open Office, and a few other open-source apps. They are superior to the Microsoft alternatives(and free as in beer!). But they are on my machine first and foremost because installing/configuring them was a breeze.

-Signed
A repenting Linux Zealot