Slashdot Mirror
Gnome 2.6 Usability Review
TuringTest writes ""The user-centric UI webzine" UserInstinct has published a usability overview of the latest version of the GNOME desktop. While their conclusions and recommendations are not mind-blowing, it includes two interesting appendices with a survey of new users (and their reactions to the system) and a list of common tasks of modern computer users with a commentary on how Gnome performs in each one. Note that usually You Only Need to Test With 5 Users (this report tests 4), you need to test additional users when an interface has several highly distinct groups of users and thus the conclusions in this review should not be taken as definitive."
Not 5? Well, this is worthless then. Listen to useability/web design guru Nielsen!
Hello,
I have started a little project which is intended to get the GNOME Desktop into a different direction. It's not aimed for people who love GNOME as it is now - No, it's more aimed to those who are experts to Unix and who like and wish so many times that some of the changes that went into GNOME never happened. The project was started yesterday and the first patches to *fix* the buttonorder (as one of many ideas and points) were created already. I plan to create the outstanding *fixes* for correcting the buttonorder in the upcoming days (as I have time) and then like to head over to other things that I personally like to have fixed. The project is not aimed to be a cooperation with the core GNOME it's more private work that I started for my own needs.
In case someone is interested then feel free to read more about it on the Project GoneME page. Please do not expect huge wonders, it's just a test to see if people might be interested or not. As said it mainly covers my own interests at the moment. Please also don't put to much value in my brought up project description, they need to be reworked and altered anyways. I wrote the stuff as they came into my mind.
Why do Linux desktops try to mimic Windows so much?
Programers have no sense of aesthetics.
What usability?
The tunnel of mirrors file browsing is from Satan.
Satan.
How do you feel about spelling Nazis?
Live from the spelling nazi: it's grammar. Two 'A's. Weird, but that's life in the English-speaking world for you...
Task #1 - Email
* Clicked Applications right away
* Discovered "Internet"
* Discovered "Web Browser"
(The above happened in less than 10 seconds)
* Ignored "Start Here"
* User admitted to not being used to clicking on Start Here and decided to go looking after the desktop did not have an internet icon
* Clicked URL bar
* Typed in URL
* Logged in
* "Fuck no I don't want to do that" referring to saving passwords, never saves passwords at home
* Read mail
Guess GNOME really IS a terrible user interface, haha. (Before you mod me as a troll, RTFA, they actually say this.)
And with that above post, I hereby say: let the KDE vs. Gnome flame wars begin!!!!!
It's good to see a fairly unbaised, objective look at an open source product on Slashdot. Many times, we see either a "OMG Open Source = good" or a "I couldn't even get it installed, this sucks!" in place of an actual review. In this instance, it seems as though the reviewers actually tried to make this a fair review. They used users with different experience levels to get an overall picture of the usability of Gnome 2.6. While they could have used more than one user for each stereotype for statistical reasons, it seems at though they have done a decent job in their review. It is reviews like this that show us what to work on.
http://www.linspire.com/RunLinspireFlash.php
Hurray! Let's hear it for people who don't
have the competence to use vim!
ion2
/usr/ports/x11-wm/ion-2
For those with FreeBSD who hate the mouse...
# cd
# make install
6, 7 or 8 users might not get you that much more information than you'll get from a 5 user test... but it's when the public at large gets ahold of your program that it's really put to the test.
Like the article says, you need to hold a second testing group when there's a second classification of user who uses your program. And when you release you program to the public, if it's a truely good program than somebody will think of a situation in which to use the tool you made that you didn't antisipate.
* Didn't know how to use Ximian Open Office, so the user closed it immediately and sat frustrated
Oh man, poor girl (my instincts say it's a girl, because guys just don't sit there being frustated), I somehow feel bad for her, perhaps ready to cry because the computer isn't working "right".
Anyway, being accostumed to Windows, I find the quirks of Linux frustating as well, for example sounds never work 100% for me, without tweaking. Sure, I can read the HOWTOs and tweak it till it's perfect, but sometimes I don't feel like it, especially when there's so many other quirks that need tweaking..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Ha! Oh my that's crazy!
Good review - it's especially funny because its raw (unedited) format. I especially liked the part in the Mac/Systems Architect User's notes that said:
:)
"Task #4 - ICQ/Chat
* Loaded Gaim
* "Holy crap" at the number of protocols
*...
I didn't know I was being recorded when I said that!
I thought the review could have used just one more user though - the Beginner who is NOT "hesitant" (as the article puts it).
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
Best off topic post EVER.
My biggest problem with the version of Gnome that I use(2.4.?) is that window focus is handled extremely poorly - if I click on any part of the window EXCEPT the task bar, the window doesn't gain focus, whereas in Windows and KDE, the default is to give a window focus no matter where you click, which is much more reasonable. I'm open to suggestions to fix this problem- I'm forced to use Gnome if I want to play music, since Xmms inexplicably doesn't work in KDE. If its not a user configurable option, I think it would be nice if this was fixed in the newer versions of Gnome.
Also, regarding the debates about the spacial mode file browsing, I wonder why nobody has entered the idea of tree based browsers into the debate. I don't use the "My Computer" style of file browsing- the "Explorer" program, with a panel for a tree based view, works much better for me, and seems like a more reasonable standard than either the classic or the spacial style browsers.
Well, it happened. My life's dream is now fulfilled; as special bonus, I was stabbed by a spelling nazi too!
I'm Slashdotted out, so I'm going out.
COMPUTER OFF!
Oh, that's not going to work until voice recognition in Longhorn. Darn.
'What the hell is "GNOME-gegl2.png"? "That's disgusting!"'
I would prefer it if they'd have all the task based crap and then an advanced option for those people who can look for stuff on their own. Rather than having all the new fangled task based stuff and a two finger salute to the rest of us with an explaination of "it's easier". Not for me it bloody isn't.
Maybe I'm just one of these oldies who believe you actually have to think (*gasp*) when using a computer.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Why isn't there an open source attempt to model what the folks in Cuppertino are doing? KDE and Gnome are both Windows copies. I think folks would switch in droves if they could get an open-source Mac copy to run on their PC hardware.
I can't think of any incentive for switching from an XP interface to one that is almost as good as XP.
First off they reccommend "a higher level of abstractation", which is sort of BS. You see it in 2 examples:
1. They should hide the terminal.
-- Nobody has to use it if they don't want. However a user interface can't be designed just for newbies. In order to be efficient you have to make it usefull. Terminals are very usefull. You need it still, and hiding it isn't a good idea.
Lots of directions you face will, even for newbies , especially with troubleshooting would be like:
type ifconfig in the terminal.
type dmesg in the terminal.
type ps aux in the terminal.
This isn't difficult stuff. You open up the terminal and type it in.
--2. This one realy showed me that some of their advice is completely worthless.
They want to make the level of abstraction of error messages to be higher?
HELL NO. You want the error messages to tell you almost exactly what is going on, you want to have even MORE information aviable. Ever use "mplayer"?
The goal isn't to scare a user, it's to make it actually USEFULL.
New users need help. They come to me, first thing I ask? "What was the error message?", if it's very abstract it's also very worthless.
The guys who wrote this article obviously have quite a bit break from reality, and want to have computers be freindly, happy, and virtually useless.
I tried hard to use Gnome 2.6 as my primary desktop, but I gave up in favor of KDE.
Some reasons:
-Too slow
-not so well integrated
-doesn't feel a unified system(shortcuts, menus, etc)
-Again, too slow. Every release it gets slower.
The have changed enlightenment for sawfish, then for the actual wm.
The same happened for the file manager: gmc, then nautilus
And for the browser: galeon, nautilus, epiphany, now mozilla?
A very poor control center. Example: try to add virtual desktops from the control center. It's impossible, it's hidden in the desktops applets.
It's a mess, since the people funding the project dedicated to other things, Gnome seems to have lost direction.
To me, Gnome is just a desktop bar, all the enviroment and other apps doesn't feel really integrated.
Omar
Has anyone done usability tests on GNOME (or KDE for that matter) with respect to internationalization? Last time I checked, most applications are written just for the English speaker and typer. It seems like to get a good setup with all the programs in the appropriate language, you need to restrict yourself to a specialized distribution..which isn't a great option if you need to support more than one language.
With gtk2's new input module support, it has made it easier to input languages which require a more complex method, but that is only limited to those gtk2 programs. So if you were using KDE, I think you would have to use input methods that talk through X, which are very unfriendly. On the other hand, it seems like windows has the advantage here of everything using the same toolkit which has pretty good internationalization support.
This is off-topic so you can moderate accordingly, but is there a similar limit for governments? For example, in science fiction there is often the assumption that a single world government is the most efficient, but perhaps some other number would actually be better. Competing economic systems and philosophies might actually be beneficial, so the fall of communism might not have been the unalloyed good fortune it seems -- after all, the space race is what actually pushed us to the moon.
It seems to me this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they created the United States, to have several groups of people not only in cooperation but in competition with each other so new ideas would be continually generated and tried, but I'd be curious to see other's ideas if this comment is still visible.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What I found interesting was the expectations people had and that the results a) don't necessarily show Gnome only - font handling, system setup, etc. Also, the test subjects? I mean, you're given a system to test, and "experienced Unix user" is all set to download and install Mozilla? FFS. Finally, recommendation 5 appears to be written by someone with no clue about how the software industry works.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Less common cases like the error message shown above should also be abstracted if possible. Knowing that the operation is not permitted offers little help to the unaccustomed user. GNOME already does an outstanding job in catching many of these types of errors and translating them into something users can understand. It is the hope of the reviewers that the developers continue in this regard. I dunno I prefer to have rather verbose error messages. Though it may not mean much to the common user, it can be quite helpful if they seek help from a more knowledgeable user. Besides, why change it? all you can (usually) do is click ok anyways.
Send a message to that dimwit miguel that he's no longer welcome in th Linux world.
I'm sure that would terrify him.
Life is offtopic.
At the risk of starting a flame-war (please, I know this is /., but there's no need for that), can anyone tell me if Gnome is more usable than KDE? Are they both putting the same amount of effort in making their desktops user-friendly?
One of the more interesting things in that study was their list of tasks... Now that the problem is broken down in smaller pieces, it might be fun to test several designs in rapid iterations (tweak, test on 5 users, repeat) concentrating only on 2-3 tasks at a time. Oh- perhaps the most important question: how easy is it for people interested in usability to get involved in either project?
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I like the idea of creating a HIG certification program of sort, but not for Gnome, but for all of the Unix/Linux desktop. Why? If you have a Gnome certification then of course core Gnome gnome apps will strive to be compliant and so will some others, but it wont really go farther than that.
Maybe start a freedesktop.org project. This way open office, KDE, Gnome, SDL, wine (hehe), and other applications will be interested in making sure that their applications are compliant. It will probably be harder, but the payoff will be a hundred times better. Not only will you get Gnome apps all interacting with each other, but you will have all the rest of the Linux/BSD/Unix apps working alone side nicely.
Another reason why this would be a good freedeskop.org project is because all of the other work that is being done there. Stuff like making sure your application uses the standard desktop icon names when referencing icons (so either Gnome or KDE icon sets work in both KDE and Gnome apps).
Having a little list of current compliment HIG applications would be a major incentive for apps to get on that list too. Maybe it would even spawn a little compitition about keeping/getting all of their apps (kde/gnome/etc) compliant.
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Only precede words with the "an" article if the word in question starts with a vowel SOUND. Merely having a vowel as the first letter of the word is not a sufficient qualifier.
The hard "y" sound, as in usability (yoosability) does NOT require the "an" article.
For fuck's sake, just say it aloud, and you'll quickly realize it's stupid as hell. Fucking damned pedants who can't even get it right - that's all this world needs.
They put buttons in the 'wrong' order.. Normally it's Ok/Cancel, with Gnome it's Cancel/OK!
Aaaarg!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I like giving the user a simple message, then adding a 'Details' button for the stack trace etc.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
I already started the flame war
here
get quicker to the draw dude.
the plural for Ninja, is Ninja.
You must now sing the Ninja song!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ali,
While I completeley disagree with your feelings about where the GNOME project has taken things (I think they should have gone much further and totally flipped off the unix geeks and shouldn't have blindly copied so many of microsoft's mistakes), I do respect you for your decision to fork, as the GNOME guys have been complete and utter jackasses about many things (such as usability, or lack thereof). I have had the same idea as you, albeit to fork GNOME in a completely opposite direction with the Clarux project and making GNOME far more mac-like. While I totally disagree with what you're doing, I'm glad at least someone had the same idea, even if it does run counter to mine.
One piece of advice to the opposition: the Free Software community says they promote freedom, but often, that's not the case. A while back, I created a fork of KDE that removed some really stupid usability problems the project had refused to deal with for years. I provided all my changes as source code people could download, I complied with the GPL, but Freshmeat refused to post the project because they considered it "only a patch". If you do something considered "significant" like modify someone else's code, it can be considered a distribution. But if you modify something that the Free Software community considers "insignificant", like the user experience, it's only considered "a patch". People in the Free Software development community might tell you "if you think you can do better, make your own version"; the thing is, they don't really mean it. So I'm warning you now, if you are really planning on forking a major desktop environment, you won't be able to rely on traditional community outlets for promoting it.
Last piece of advice--post as yourself. Stop this silly oGaLaxYo/Anonymous Coward crap. Post as Ali Agaa, be proud of your opinion, and be proud of what you're trying to stand up for and accomplish (even if it is rather silly).
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Also, how about Chinese user, Hebrew user, Arabic user, to test language differences in the interface. How about blind user, disabled user? Even illiterate user? I am not joking. Check out the Simputer.
If you're being paid to work on Gnome for a business, do more of what that businesses clients want. Not less. Currently, most Red Hat staff/customers (who aren't Gnome developers) don't like spatial nautilus. A challenge for the Gnome devs is to either convince those people otherwise (by making it better or explaining its usefullness, not overriding people preferences). If they can't, it shouldn't be the default for EL4.
You can take their review as gospel all you want, I'll continue to read reviews from people that have withstood the test of time and had a bit more scrutiny.
You can choose your reviews based on ad hominem criteria involving post counts; I'll choose my reviews based on the abstract and then weigh each conclusion based on the evidence that the review presents.
That's sick. Moderate down, please.
The Linux kernel and the GNOME desktop did NOT GET IN THE WAY of the applications for those users.
:)
You're correct about too much time being spent on the applications. But that's how most users operate. They spend the MINIMUM time possible interacting with the desktop and the MAXIMUM time interacting with the applications. (Aside from playing with backgrounds and sounds. I hate webshots.)
Personally, I think that a tiny bit of work on that study and the NEXT study would show Linux being incredibly easy to use even for novices.
#1. Get rid of the unstable apps. Each icon that they click on MUST launch an application and that application MUST be the most stable of the bunch.
#2. Populate the desktop with the apps they'll be trying to find (nothing like making it easy for them). This is what I do at work. And remove any other icons. They can put other ones there when they are more comfortable with the system.
#3. Put the controls for changing the background and the sounds in a very visible location and name them something like "Cool effects". Then give them lots of pictures and sounds to choose from.
So, the desktop would have the "My Computer" (or whatever) icon.
The "My Network Places" (or whatever) icon.
The "Recycle Bin" (or whatever) icon.
The "Work applications" folder/link icon.
The "Cool effects" folder/link icon.
The "Games" folder/link icon.
The "Help" icon (context searchable, etc).
Also, once you've run through with each of the testers the first time, have them form small groups and run through the test again. In the workplace, they will talk to each other and share tips/hints/ways to install spyware crap/etc.
Does the desktop facilitate or hinder that kind of human interaction?
And toss in a screensave as a background option just to give them something that Windows doesn't do.
Spewing anti-KDE nonsense. KDE is and has always been better at internationalization... it was written by Germans for heaven sakes! Stop spouting FUD, please?
"User #2 is a little bitch."
don't tell me the F/OSS community doesn't understand usability!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
screw users....
Who the fuck cares about terrifying him.
As long he stops damaging Linux with his crap.
Get the little shit a job a Microsoft.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did you really mean Unix experts, or did you mean Windows experts?
Do you have some justification to offer for your changes other than, "Windows does it that way?" And what does the way Windows does thing have to do with so-called Unix experts.
I completely fail to understand what the big deal is with the Gnome button order. I have been a Windows user since Windows 3.1 and a computer user since many years before that.
I have used Gnome. Until someone mentioned it on Slashdot, it never occurred to me that it was somehow difficult to understand the button order. In fact, the "button order" as an object of any thought or criticism had never occurred to me.
Frankly: what is the problem here? Do you operate your computer in a dark, smokey room while wearing sunglasses? Or is your Gnome installation suffering from a misconfiguration issue such that buttonfaces are flat blank and you must guess as to their function?
If you can make Gnome better, then by all means do so. But I'm just having a difficult time conceiving of how it might come to be that this is an issue for someone. Utterly mad.
They even sue people for creating Aqua themes fer chrissakes.
this fella isn't a team player - being just like everyone else, and fallowing the direction of our supreme leader is necessary
troll!
That's about the most sexist thing I've read for a while, and I think you're not a troll but somebody who doesn't realize how sexist and patronizing his words sound.
Gnome does not use "Cancel" or "OK"
This isn't firsthand info because the last time I tried GNU/Linux, it turned out my video card was incompatible with accelerated X11 for GNU/Linux, and my scanner was incompatible with SANE. Nevertheless, the first page of results from typing gnome into Google Images showed a Cancel|OK in GST's Users and Groups, Network, Bootloaders, and Runlevel dialogs. One should probably change those into Cancel|Save. Or are those old screenshots?
boxes and it's not bad at all. I've used both the 4.0 and 4.5 versions. The click and run warehouse is exactly that. Click on the software you want to install and that's it.. the aps download and install without a hitch. I'm impressed. It's as close to a consumer Linux as I've seen.
Disclaimer, though, I'm running SuSE 9.1 and loving it for the main machine at my desk at home. The day job office main desktop dual boots 98SE and Lindows 4.0. The 98 is for legacy DOS programs that won't run under XP or Wine.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
...but it just isn't true that the button order decision was made without consulting existing usability research and experts, or without discussion.
I think it's great that you are aiming to remove the esound dependency, reduce the web of library dependencies, and generally reduce bloat.
But can't this be done - by you - within or in participation with the GNOME community?
For example, no one is going to complain if you can submit good GTK+ patches to improve performance.
Just a suggestion.
Its lunch time so i thought I would throw my hat in the ring.
:)
I have been using Gnome 2.6 for i guess a few months now and I have to say it is excellent. I used to use fluxbox (a great WM) but to be honest I haven't really looked back.
I use it nightly as a desktop workstation. I do everything on it from developing firmware for Atmel micros, GUIs in GTK2, web browsing, warez downloading and playing enemy territory.
Gnome 2.6 is faily well intergrated these days. Generally a right click on something will bring up options with what you can do, Left click selects - its nice and predictable. Ctrl-C Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V work as they do in Windows - very cool.
Straight after installation I could do drag and drop burning (good for making an mp3 cds for my car). Another thing that has me impressed are all the cool system tray apps that come with it. They are easy to add and handy too. Right now I have one for net, one for cpu and one for local weather. The Local weather one is awesome as I can always have my finger on the pulse.
I can't say I like spatial browsing though. Not default at least. Personally I found it really frustrating. Its not like i didn't give it a go either - I had it in spatial mode for about a month. It spreads like a cancer across your workspace. Before you know it you have waaaaaay too many windows open. Hiding the address bar is pretty stupid too imho - it makes it really easy to get lost and confused (especially when spatial mode decides you need 3 windows open to traverse 3 directorys). Perhaps if spatial mode didn't open a new window each time (or swapped middle and left click functions), and showed where you were I wouldn't mind it as much. My problem with spatial browsing was solved when i turned it off
Another dislike is definitely the file select dialog. Who makes a file select dialog where entering the text yourself is not an option? Would it really have thrown the file select dialog into chaos if it was included? Why make it so it is completely unintuitive for a computer user who has been using Windblows for years? Now a file select dialog with text entry and typeahead search on the files in that directory would be great default behaviour. (please don't tell me about the hotkey either - that is not intuitive)
Generally though I think Gnome 2.6 is pretty awesome. It is the best Linux DE I have ever used and I will continue to use it. It is definitely a step foward for the Linux Desktop.
"Not to mention his posts on osnews as ogalaxyo gave me the impression that he was a 12 year old kid who simply hasn't figured out how things work yet."
Google for oGalaxyo or the text from one of his screeds. It gets more interesting, especially when one of the lead KDE guys ripped him a new one. I think oo is from Germany (might explain his lovefest with KDE, and feelings toward GNOME).
1) Improve Task-Orientation
I can't help but think that GNOME usability would shoot through the roof had they put a porn icon right on the desktop.One task that consistently stumped users, causing them to go into exploration, was the initial discovery of where the web browser resided. The seemingly obvious answer eluded users for seconds.
End Communication.
You'd probably get some nasty comments about gnome's speed if you gave them middle-aged computers.
Right now gnome's main usability problem is it's speed. That's the only reason I don't use it. I have a 900mhz Duron. Sure it's old but it runs wind32 and qt apps quickly-- quickly enough for most tasks. I hope gtk gets speed tweaks soon. (I've even heard people with recent CPUs saying gtk feels lethargic on their systems.)
I know the study was aimed at the layout of the desktop and such but let's face it responsiveness is a big part of a user's experience.
(On MacOS X, step 1 was the hardest, because there's either no console icon by default, or the store had removed it)
It doesn't matter what I'm trying to achieve, I always do this. Does anyone else do the same?
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
Currently, the HIG (see above) is made available to developers for voluntary adherence. If more resources were made availCurrently, the HIG (see above) is made available to developers for voluntary adherence. If more resources were made available, the GNOME project could start a certification program to document compliance with the standard. This would allow users to seek out certified applications and know that these applications would integrate well with their existing desktops.able, the GNOME project could start a certification program to document compliance with the standard. This would allow users to seek out certified applications and know that these applications would integrate well with their existing desktops.
Horrible idea. None of the good desktop interfaces out there have *ever* required certification. We know that it is not necessary to produce an easy-to-use desktop. Further, this will discriminate against those people that do not have money to pay certification fees, slow development of applications (as individual versions would have to each be certified), and slow evolution of the HIG itself. I am opposed, and think that any attempt to formalize a certification process as part of GNOME would simply lead to bad feelings, loss of good will for GNOME, and project fragmentation.
Unfortunately, those who were not were just as quickly lost and confused. To maintain the abstraction, we recommend that it be removed from the view of the new user and kept in the application menu.
There were a number of suggestions like these -- hiding advanced functionality. While this is a reasonable approach -- the terminal is still in the applications menu, and easily available and easily found by non-novice users -- it is also extremely important not to work too hard to hide functionality. One of the largest problems with GNOME 2.x (IMHO, of course) is that significant and valuable functionality has been hidden or deprecated in the name of more basic "easy to use" features. This includes two of my favorite pet peeves:
* Viewport support (someone apparently decided that it was "confusing" to allow the user to have a window partly on one viewport and partly on another, so it was replaced with a number of virtual desktops). As a result of this technical decision, sawfish (which is not the newbie-recomended GNOME WM in any event) underwent significant negative technical change.
* User-rebindable accelerators. In GNOME 1, unlike every other GUI that I know of, accelerator keys attached to menu items can be simply and easily rebound by highlighting a menu item and tapping the desired key combination. This is a phenomenally powerful feature that demonstrated that the OSS world really *does* enjoy new ideas and significantly improved the GNOME user experience. It meant, for the first time, that the user was not bound by the decisions of the application developer. KDE has a similar-but-not-identical feature that allows *some* menu item accelerators to be globally rebound (frankly, I'd like to see the synthesis of these two featurs). Anyway, some usability person decided that this could be confusing to a new user (fine, I'll buy that) and the solution presented was to entirely disable this feature and requires manually adding a line to a text file on a per-user basis, instead of simply providing a toggle button in an "Advanced..." dialog or something similar. As a result, few users know about or take advantage of this functionality.
A remedy is needed for this situation. The answer could be an installation application that can speak to all of the popular distributions. It could be built in such a modular way as to allow new backends and functionality.
This is a good idea, and should have been done a while ago. It's a bit disheartening to think that this will likely have a very limited subset of functionality and be used by most users, though.
A solution to this problem that allows for applications to be downloaded from webpages an
May we never see th
I dunno I've tried em' both, KDE and GNOME. Every time I install a new slak I try one or the other.
.... it don't get no simpler.
I always toast em' after a few days and just use my ancient WMaker configs. They are slow and I don't need my hand held. Rxvt comes up instantly and with a -e switch it starts any X program. WMaker's menu system makes 'roll-yer-own' menus pretty simple.
I play a video by right clicking on the desktop, left clicking on Vids/AquaTeen/ATHF-Unremarkable-Voyage-44
I think way to much effort goes into this stuff myself.
PenGun
Do What Now ???
I don't believe that the author was suggesting a less verbose, but a more descrpitive explanation of the error. ..." being useful to anyone.
An discription of "Divice could not be removed because divice is in use. Make sure no there are no open files and try again." or "Divice could not be removed because you do not have sufficent privileges." are more of what the author was suggesting.
I don't think that a error stating "Error occured at 0x520F3BC0 0C 15 36 2B 3A 24 8F
(appended to the end of comments you post)
Neither Qt nor Gtk are X toolkits. They are .Net equiva-
psuedo X toolkits, i.e. they run on X but
don't follow or use X mechanism for toolkit
implementation. So, on an X platform, the
quetion then becomes, why bother using either?
Why not use Java (Swing) or some
lent? Barring some very peculiar or particular
reason, you don't need either Qt, or Gtk anymore
(on X). Write it in Java and you get both com-
pile-time platform independence and run-time
platform independence.
Note: I'm not really a huge fan of the concept
of VM run-time cross-platform anything. But this
is one case where I think it makes sense. If you
are *not* going to use X11 as X11, then go with a
cross-platform (run-time) toolkit like Java Swing.
Okay, yes, I know there are some places where Qt,
or Gtk may be better suited. Embedded space
perhaps. But I'm speaking in the more general
sense here.
You can. There's a developer's edition. I downloaded a free copy of Linspire (officially) a few months ago, can't entirely remember how.. but it's doable. It wasn't that bad really.
Not being a power user or computer guru I find this to be a bit silly. One of the main reasons I tried out Linux in the first place was the fact that there were so many different desktop "look and feels" included. I change Window managers a lot. Every couple of days. I stick mainly with KDE because it was my first desktop and I have it sort of figured out. It, to me it seems fairly easy to use. I like a lot of the others though. It all depends on what mood I am in at the time. Sometimes I feel like a "start button" sometimes I don't Sometimes I feel like desktop icons, sometimes, I don't. My favorite thing about Linux is the diversity. I have never been a fan of the way the Mac OS looks. I am sure it is a great OS but I am not that fond of the bubble gum cartooniness of the latest Mac OS. I am not that fond of the Linux WM's that try to emulate that look. I prefer a different type of look to my desktop. I am not sure how to describe it. Window managers like enlightenment, fluxbox, windowmaker and afterstep. They usually have a clean look to them.
While I have some sympathy for your opinion, it is outweighed by one thing - put bluntly, GNOME's got balls. And I respect that a lot. Ever since 2.x began, they have taken their design goals and refused to let them be compromised by the hordes of bickering Slashdotters that can't live without their favorite features. Forcing people into spatial Nautilus is just another aspect of that - they push you into it because it's part of the project's goals. They have a vision of how the desktop should work and they refuse to dilute it by making everything an option. Like many others, I hated spatial at first and then grew to appreciate it. Their decision was a good one. If you truly dislike something, you have the source code - most behaviors are easily modified there if you're as hardcore as you proclaim to be.
And if you don't like GNOME's design goals, then fine - use something else. KDE accomodates every preference in the universe - to the extent that you need a search function in the control panel. Or use Openbox - it's lean and has lots of neat gadgets. But don't waste your breath complaining about GNOME. Your comments won't come as any surprise to them.
Right now gnome's main usability problem is it's speed.
One significant improvement that would help many GNOME users would be to add jump scroll support to gnome-terminal.
In xterm (or the even peppier rxvt), there is a limited number of refreshes that can happen a second. Internally, much text can go by between each screen refresh. This avoids huge numbers of unnecessary screen displays being done. You can easily cat tens of thousands of lines of text to rxvt almost instantly -- gnome-terminal takes a while to churn through all of them.
May we never see th
The recommendations don't follow from the user experience. Several don't necessarily follow, but I'll present the dominant problem here:
/etc/issues, and I edited it. It worked. I rebooted. It went away. It took me the longest time to figure out that an fucking script in /etc/rc.something/ was overwriting it. The information was stored in two places. I overwrote the wrong one, and boom. I was fucked. I stopped using Red Hat precisely because of the complex configuration scripts, which made the system fragile and ultimately, easy to break and difficult to use.
Maintain the Abstraction from the Underlying System
This is almost universally the wrong approach -- this is what Windows tries to do, and MacOS avoids. The key is to make the underlying system simple, and make the UI reflect that.
The problem with abstracting the two is that it leads to bit rot. At some point, the Windows registry will think a file is in one location, whereas the file is actually in another. Or the UI will misunderstand the way that the 5 options in the configuration file should be presented as 2 options in the UI. Or there will be some underlying binary configuration file, with some option that's not available in the GUI, that somehow gets flipped, breaking the whole system.
You very strongly don't want an abstraction. On the Mac, installing an application (I haven't use OSX, so my knowledge is based on the older versions) is as easy as dragging the folder onto the hard drive. To erase, you wipe it. On Windows, if you wipe an app like that, it'll leave bits and pieces of itself scattered throughout the registry, links in menus, DLLs in system folders, and dozens of other places. Worse, the uninstaller will often no longer work. Most clueless users, if they try to erase an application the wrong way, will end up with a semibroken system, since there are different levels of abstraction that do not maintain consistency.
The whole Windows (and increasingly, GNU/Linux) approach of abstracting out underlying complexity is flawed. The trick is to eliminate the underlying complexity, and have a single set of simple structures that the GUI tools (or the users manually) operate on.
When I first used Red Hat in '96, the types of issues that threw me were: I wanted to change the login text. I grepped for the old login text, found
This shows up a huge number of places -- especially in a heterogenous environment like GNU/Linux, you often have multiple configuration tools. I can download a half dozen Apache configuration tools. Very often, if you run one, then switch to another, the thing no longer works, since they edit different options in different ways.
One way to implement this (presented in an oversimplified fashion) is to first design what you want the UI to look like. Once you know, you design the underlying structure to match. This is the opposite of what most GNU/Linux and Windows developers do, where they try to engineer the most flexible underlying structure possible, and then develop a UI on top of that. This doesn't necessarily lead to less flexible underlying structures -- it's just that to have a good UI, you want to give some thought to the user experience when designing the engine, and especially, the configuration files.
Should you build your UI based on feedback from the average Joe? I'd like to lay down while driving my car, but clearly designers think the best idea so far is sitting in an upright position. Grow a set, innovate the UI* and quit trying to clone Windows. * and by innovate I mean think tank concepts not geeky crap like why every "average joe" linux distro comes with 700 things theyll never run. YEAH, MAN I WANT THOSE NEATO EYES THAT FOLLOW MY MOUSE ON THE TASKBAR! sigh.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
I see nothing wrong with that.
There are some people who don't use Python, and these people shouldn't have to install it just so that they can build Gnome.
I am saying this as a person whose current favorite language is Python.
I used to find myself similarly annoyed when I found that some project required Java to be installed in order to build something.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I have been using UNIX and UNIX-like systems since around 1980, and currently I use Mozilla as my primary browser (both in Linux and MS-Windows).
What browser do you use?
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
A good example of this approach is the Linux kernel configuration system. Here, the configuration information is stored in a single, standard format. It describes what the configuration options mean, the dependencies, etc. Then, there can be a number of "dumb" configuration tools (make config/menuconfig/xconfig/etc.) that all work on the same underlying format, entirely consistently, and in addition, users can modify it by hand. This single file is used for everything in the build process. It is impossible for the file to be inconsistent, as it is handled.
A bad way to do this would be to have a "Kernel Build Wizard," that was hand-coded for a dozen kernel options, and had its own expert system to set the remainder automatically, and that had it's own higher-level config file that built into a kernel config file. (The right way to do this would be to push the automatic information down into the kernel configuration language).
Linus is brilliant, and always does things the Right way. Now if only the major distributors were as smart...
I'm beginning to get very frustrated by these usability studies because they all tend to make the same false assumption that "familiarity for new users" == "usability for all users."
This is simply NOT true. Usability is a complex quality, and it is the result of compromises among often conflicting goals such as discoverability of options, reduction of keystrokes/clicks for common tasks, customizability where common base cannot be established, compatibility with competing interfaces, humaneness of interface after long-usage, accessibility, internationalization, etc. etc. How quickly New Users can discover and perform tasks is only one dimension of the usability scale, and one that's not even all that important except in a setting like public access kiosks or Internet cafes.
Different OSes approach this problem differently, and where as Mac OS X has chosen to compromise all the goals with an emphasis on discoverability and tolerance after long usage, Windows has chosen to place a different emphasis on sacrificing flexibility for complex tasks in favor of making simple, repetitive tasks easy to accomplish. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.
The traditional strength of the various Linux desktop systems has been flexibility and customizability, with less emphasis on the other issues. I'm not suggesting that the needs of new users whose primary OS is not Linux in settings like Kiosks and labs should not be taken into consideration, but it should not be the ONLY consideration.
Usability studies like this one emphasize the needs of new users with Linux as a secondary OS over everything else. Take this as an example:
These extra areas (the desktop-reveal button, the workspace switcher, the file manger icon, the terminal icon, and the running application button in the top right) could be removed by default...
This is the sort of recommendation that makes sense for kiosk machines (simplify the UI as much as possible and go for task-orientation), but it doesn't make sense for long-term usability. Removal of these features means that users will have to discover them and add them back in, and that plays into one of the weaknesses of the current Linux desktops: discoverability is relatively poor. This is a very shortsighted and pointless recommendation for a desktop system that is also meant to be used as a primary desktop system for many home users.
I wish usability studies would really think about what usability is, over all and long-term, rather than just "can new users in a hurry get an email written?"
"They want to make the level of abstraction of error messages to be higher?"
Now I'm too intimidated to RTFA. You mean someone wants to read, "Gnome encountered a problem and had to close?"
If you need a stupid feature like integrated voice recognition, try Mac OSX. I'm no longer a maccie, but it does have an integrated voice recognition service, which you can program to any name such as "COMPUTER" or whatever you want.
But! we must wait until redmond "invents" the feature, no?
It's not clear that the task-oriented approach is better -- my experience has been that most users don't want to do the recommended tasks, or want 10% functionality that's not in the recommended tasks, and so need to learn more of the system either way. Few people sit down at a computer once, use it for 15 minutes, and never use it again. Most people use a computer at least a few times a week, and it's important that those people can get things done. The addition of a "compose e-mail" task to the desktop buys very little in practice.
Also, the breakdown into "new user" and "experienced user" is a little too broad. As an "experienced user," having to figure out how to reconfigure a dumbed-down GUI usually takes a few hours, and is often not worth it. I also don't automatically know where things in GUIs are located. When I first sat down at this Sun (running some CDE hacked up for ease-of-use), it took me about 15 minutes to find a terminal. It sucked. An intermediate user shouldn't have to spend half an hour figuring out common "intermediate user" tasks to make the system simpler for a new user, nor should they be assumed to be an "advanced user with a surplus of time" who can or wants to take the time to reconfigure the system, because some asshole decided new users would be confused by having the terminal in any ready-accessible menu, and hid it 5 layers down. There really needs to be a smooth gradient that balances the needs of all users, not just new ones. This should include very advanced users who don't have time
to spend reconfiguring every machine they sit at.
One way to solve this would be to have Gnome, upon first startup, be able to select one of several default suites ("Expert" "Intermediate" "Beginner", as well as some level of screen realstate used by Gnome vs. proximity of features).
To emulate the Mac OS feel, you'd have to create a filebrowser that could execute GUI apps easily (e.g. opening firefox in konqueror).
ROX-Filer managed to copy Mac OS X's app bundles.
Oh heck, a mac I bought in 1992 (!) had voice recognition. It just never freaking worked. There's viavoice etc for the PC and they don't work either. Someday someone will make it work, and all the endless "desktop" arguments will be moot.
Maybe (s)he pronounces it "ooze-ability".
My Acer aspire from 1995 had working voice recognition. Worked like a charm. I could say "Shut down...yes," and it would shut down. I could say "Switch to Descent" and it would start Descent. I could say "Switch to Chess" and it would start Descent. I could say "Switch to CHESS you stupid computer" and it would shut down.
The link in the article advises on about three tests of 5 users.
Whereas their own graph shows 15 users in 1 test would find 100% of the problem, 5 users would find only about 80%. Logic dictates that a second session with 5 users would find another 80% of the previously undiscovered 20%; 80+16 = 96% and a third would again find 80% of the left 4%, making just about 99%.
Is there something wrong with their own data or with the logic of the advise?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I use Mozilla, but you missed my point. It's a desktop environment test session, and this guy's first thought is to download and install stuff which could reasonably be expected to be there. An Experience Unix user should have known that, but this guys's firing up the terminal and trying to do it all the hard way... and if you're there to test a desktop you shouldn't really be trying to avoid it via the shell or customise the install with your own software.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
If you want to compile (or use, in the case of interpeted languages) a piece of software which uses a certain language, you have to have that language installed. I can't see how thats something worth complaining about.
hello? Either you are still using gtk1.2/gnome1.4 or you are living on a different planet?!
Today Qt/KDE is miles snappier than the turtle that is gnome...
> However KDE is cluttered and there is no central document that KDE developers can refer to
n dards/k de/style/basics/
> in order to achieve proper usability.
KDE usability is comparable to (if not IMNSHO better than) GNOME usability for several reasons.
The technical framework of KDE is a lot more advanced than the GNOME stuff. Many things in the GNOME HIG are simply coded into the basic libraries of kdelibs and qt. Therefore ALL KDE apps follow the same look and feel automatically. In GNOME, a developer has to follow the HIG manually.
Also the GNOME team has at times been arrogant and has ignored normal users' requests. Spatial browser mode, crippling configuration options.
Some GNOME app developers (Ximian) just love Microsoft apps and copy them down to the last mistake. (Evolution)
Finally there is and has been for over 5 years the KDE style guide, which has always been the central reference for all usability questions in KDE. It predates the praised GNOME HIG by two or more years.
If you are interested look here:
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/sta
Moritz
Just FYI, KDE has UI Guidelines too: k de/style/basics/
* User interface design guidelines: http://developer.kde.org/documentation/design/ui/
* KDE Style Basics: http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/
"Good news, everyone!"
i like the categorys:
1. beginner/experimenter
hmm, ok? is that the same as the hobbyist?
2. beginner/hesitant user
forced ex-windows user?
3. advanced unix user
now wtf is this person doing useing a desktop at all?i thought these people only looked at the console
4. advanced mac user and system architect
whats so special about being a mac user? and how does it help being a system architect?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Yes it does! You only need the Gnome/Gtk/whatever libs. I use XMMS regularly on top of KDE w/o problems.
there is no central document that KDE developers can refer to in order to achieve proper usability.
FALSE. It even existed before GNOME's.
Every option you give a user is a choice he has to make.
RIDICULOUS. If the user doesn't like options, the defaults are perfectly good, and he doesn't need to change them.
the result is a more consistent desktop.
HILARIOUS. GNOME is more consistent than KDE? That's a good one.
Just use ion3. it's apt-gettable in Sid, and has worked for me without a hitch.
Tip for those who are about to create a multimedia set-top box - install ion. You want only minimal mouse interaction there, but still having X around enables use of vital software like streamtuner.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
You mean like this? http://info.linspire.com/lindowslive/p2p.html
"The orthogonality of function from application to application is apparent." "The use of the icons, with few exceptions, aids the orthogonality of the interface" You keep using that word -- I do not think it means what you think it means
I think there is a difference between healthy diversity and utter fragmentation.
The march of F/OSS is impeded by the embarrassment of riches.
For a random example, consider build systems. Besides autoconf/automake, how many others can you name?
If I was Redmond, I'd be putting those cash reserves into funding hundreds of new, slightly incompatible, F/OSS projects on SourceForge. Them Indians may outnumber the cowboys, but, balkanized, they can't threaten the wagons...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
... they use icons.
- Use the --browser command line option : (e.g.
- change the gconf key -
( The gconf key is likely to get a nautilus preferences setting soon )I tend to agree with you about the lack of communication between the gnome developers and their user base. Maybe the gnome developers should do some more "public relations" after new releases. or maybe the user base you just read the documentation carefully.
while (!asleep()) sheep++
The part of the Gnome compilation that requires Python could be rewritten in Bash. There is no good reason why Python should be required for this one, insignificant part of the installation.
"The answer could be an installation application that can speak to all of the popular distributions. It could be built in such a modular way as to allow new backends and functionality. Alternatively, a standard application installation procedure could be created that is supported by the majority of distributions (perhaps in addition to the native methodology)."
/Rant
;)
As a long-time Windows user, on and off trying to make a transition to Linux (as in tried several times, always reinstalled windows in the end) this is the single thing that jumped to my mind when trying Linux.
Basically, how the **** do I install / update programs?!? (I know, I RTFM; but why do I have to read a different friendly manual for each distribution I trial run?)
WTF is an emerge, and if its so great, why does only gentoo use it? What is an RPM? Exactly HOW do I install or upgrade on mandrake (realy; i have no idea!) What is a modprobe - and why should I need to know? For a desktop OS, _no_ configuration change should be commandline only... (like samba; I got it working no problems, but had to go to a root prompt and edit a file in vi - WTF?)
All these rants and more should not go through the new adopter's mind, if Linux is to ever become a mainstream desktop OS - because average users don't RTFM (you don't have to if you want to be a dumb-user in windows/macos), and don't have friendly sysadmins to do the setup for them.
thanks for your patience; feel much better now
(That is, an installed version of Gnome does not need Python.)
One -- just one -- of the Gnome libraries has an installation script that is written in Python.
The developer is rewriting the script in bash, so that Python is no longer necessary to install Gnome.
The person to whon I responded quite rudely asserted that the developer was "a goodam idiot" for doing this.
I think that he is wrong, and I wrote why.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Hopefully this review will have something nice to say so the Gnome team doesn't get embarrassed again by one of their developers whining like a spurned junior highschool diva and complaining about how the users just don't get it.
I read much of TFA, but only skimmed the actual test session logs/notes themselves.
However, depending on the desktop, one of the first things that I might do is download the latest version of this, that, or the other thing.
Before I did, though, I would check to see whether the latest version is already installed.I would think that that would be one of the tests that should be done.
How easy is it to install my own/other stuff?
How well does my own/other stuff integrate with what's there?
How easy is it to use several terminal windows, and switch between them?
Etc.
These are the kinds of things that some users of the desktop will be doing, so I see nothing wrong with this person doing them.
It's as much part of the "usability" of the interface as any other part.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I am not trolling but i feel the need to say that I really am surprised none of the testers mentioned how bad the file requester is, it hasnt improved a great deal in the latest version. However i dont know what they might have been used to, I havent used windows for a while so it might be better in their eyes.
f ilereq1.png
...
There really is no comparison to the flexibility of the KDE file requester
http://www.blackapology.com/downloads/
I cant help but think that gnomes obsession with human interface guidelines and usability studies must be flawed in some way.
The usability study while interesting is simply asking users to perform a number of functions. EG can you open a file or can you view a pdf or browse the web etc. How about "can you open a file that is tucked away deep in the bowels of the filesystem in some arbitrary directory" , id be willing to place money on the fact that the files these users were asked to open were located conveniently in the current path.
Usability seems to be based on whether or not people can perform certain tasks and not whether the way those tasks can be improved. It is deemed a success if the tester succeeds in performing a set goal. A useability study should be about using a desktop in a specific capacity for extended periods of time. Only then will the annoying problems start to crop up.
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
GNOME freaking SUCKS. But, it's the best thing going for Linux. Everything in GTK looks like garbage, acts like garbage, and is completely incoherent mindless garbage. The desktop is teh SUCK, and very little works in any intuitive fashion.
... It is a lot better, in so many different ways.
Try KDE, its much better!
That said, absolutely NOTHING in any other desktop or window manager works in ANY kind of intuitive fashion.
Most likely right, but some things are better than others.
by the way, GTK 2.4.x's file-selection-dialog is a complete and total piece of shit.
I have to agree with you here, its not much better in 2.6. And as its such a fundamental part of the desktop it doesnt bode well for the rest of it.
And the fact that sometime in the 2.4 tree, windows that have no widgets appear with their titlebars on the right hand side, instead of on the top.. that's fucking stupid. Even stupider than when the previous behavior was to not have a titlebar/close widget at all.
Man.. I'm glad I dont use Gnome
Whomever designed this garbage is a fucking moron.
I prefer to say that their Usability Studies are a waste of time and there obsession with Human Interface Guidelines is fundamentally flawed.
And this is neither TROLL nor Flamebait, so suck it moderators.
Maybe, maybe not but methinks you should try an alternative WM like KDE
The problem is that you really need to build archtypical "personas" for each of the major "roles" which use the product. The way people use a product is greatly influenced by what they are doing with it.
A product with only a few clearly defined use-cases, the number of required test users could easily be as low as five, but Gnome is really a lot more. These tests weren't just on the widget set, but on the applications which make up the Gnome Desktop. The way a programmer uses these is likely to differ from how a graphic artist uses them, which is likely to differ from how the average web-browsing user is going to use them.
I'm not slagging on the study. Frankly I'm delighted someone is doing it, but Linux (and yes I know Gnome isn't just Linux...) tends to be an operating system which supports a broad spectrum of users.
> I don't blame that on Windows, I blame it on the
> respective products. So why do so many linux
> review sites do the opposite?
Because when you talk about Gnome 2.6 you mean Gnome 2.6 AND all its default applications. When somebody tells you to "install Gnome" he means getting the applications too, because each desktop has its own associated suite of them. Gnome has its apps, KDE has its apps, and plain X11 has its apps, neither of which usually plays well with others. In Windows there is a very clear distinction between "Windows" and "Applications", even though "Windows" also includes little programs that come with it, like minesweeper. One does not imbue "Windows programs" with the same meaning as "Gnome programs" because every program runs on Windows.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Since when does Freshmeat = the open source community?
Almost all OSS projects advertise on freshmeat, so I would say that the = is justified.
> They are a 'unix program website' with every type
> of license included like proprietary stuff.
There is nothing wrong with selling your code. I would do it too if I had something anybody would buy.
> If anything you should have tried sourceforge first right?
Sourceforge is considerably slower than freshmeat and its search is far more primitive due to lack of proper categories. The slowness is actually my main gripe because on my dialup link it takes up to 30 seconds to load a single search result page, which makes the search pretty much unusable unless I already know approximately what I am looking for.
User #1: "Liked the fact the color showed up correctly, as did the table, in the PDF viewer".
Is this really worth mentioning getting the colors right as a benefit? Isn't that kinda expected?
Most of the things the users complain about Gnome in that study are already fixed in KDE. I mean, Gnome is attempting to do The Right Thing, not being easy to use. Hell, they did switch the positions of "yes" and "no" buttons, didn't they?
Actually having the words "Applications" and "Actions" available for your clicking pleasure is already a useability improvement from just presenting a foot. There's nothing instinctive about clicking a foot! (or a K)
We also have to make the nomenclature friendly. Names like "daemon" and even "ghostscript" are inappropriate. Great wars are fought over spiritual beliefs. Terms like "Services" are much more appropriate and better explain their purpose.
I'll also throw my hat in the ring with those looking for a more standardized install method. I do like the simplicity of the OSX/ROX idea but it may be that someone comes up with a better solution.
It is exciting to watch this all evolve isn't it? :)
I'm so sick of seeing people bitch and call the button order "wrong." It immediately singles out all the ignorant people for me.
It's not wrong. It's just the Microsoft order you've been conditioned on. You guys claim that people prefer Windows simply because they're used to it, then bitch about Gnome's button order being "wrong." Apparently none of you realize it's been Apple's button order for quite some time and that you only think it's wrong because you a.) have been conditioned because of Windows, and b.) you haven't bothered using the damn thing for more than five minutes (where you'll immediately get used to it and realize why the order is more intuitive that way).
... despite the name. It's a test to see how easily Windows and Mac users can apply their existing skills to using Gnome. Each user was asked to accomplish a task without being shown how to do it the "Gnome way".
Seems to me that usability should be a measure of how quickly and easily tasks can be accomplished when using the operating system as intended, which implies that the user must know how to and be practiced in it's use.
For instance, take the tested tasks and train users in how to accomplish them in the most efficient way available for each OS. Let them practice for some time with each. Then, do a timed test of how long it takes them to accomplish the task in each environment. THAT should be what we call usability.
This is really a test of people's initial reaction to having to use a similar, but different UI with no training. How valuable is that? Let's see: you set someone, who may not feel exactly secure using a computer in the first place, in front of a new UI and say that they have to try to get some stuff done. When they try to do what's worked for them in the past and it doesn't work, are they going to feel good about that? No. They'll feel that either they or the UI are stupid. And, human nature being what it is, they will generally assume that it must be the new UI. ESPECIALLY if you tell them they are helping you test the usability of the new UI.
How can the user take advantage of a better UI workflow if s/he is trying to do things the way it was done using the OS their used to?
How can all users go (untrained) through the tests as quickly and easily as the UI they've been using for five frigging years unless the tested UI is essentially identical?
I bet that if you showed them a tutorial video of how to accomplish all of the tasks and then asked them to try the tasks themselves, their reactions would have been much more positive. And, the researcher's recommendations wouldn't amount to "Hmmm, Gnome has more work to be done - it's not enough like Windows AND MacOS yet." Never mind that it can't be both. Instead, you'd have more helpful information like, "Gnome allowed users to reach a web page 17% faster than Windows. However, e-mail took 22% longer to use and needs some work."
Intuitive is nice, but is all about making connections with things the user already knows how to do. That's why icons and terms like "trashcan" are considered intuitive. When GUIs were new, they were designed to work like real-world objects enough that people could get a clue. Now that most of the people (in the US, anyway) have used a computer to some extent for years, an intuitive computer task is one that works like Windows. So, if you want to be intuitive to ex-Windows users, clone the Windows UI. And, of course, that is essentially what has happened. In the case of this test of Gnome, you'll notice that the rough spots in the testing were in those areas where Gnome DOESN'T work like Windows.
A user is only new to a tool once, but if the tool is any good the user will use the tool for the rest of her life, making the time spent learning the tool insignificant. Rather than making interfaces 'discoverable', I'd like to see interfaces made 'efficient' and augmented with a tutorial mode. There is no reason to combine tutorial mode with day-to-day usage mode. This applies equally well to software as to anything else.
Hi. I know this is a very sensitive subject (as I can tell from the responses/debate raging here), but I'd like to make a plea from a plain old user's perspective. Would it be so bad if I could move from Windows to Linux without relearning every detail of my day to day computing needs? I'm not asking for a copy of Windows... well, maybe I am... what does it matter? I want to move away from Windows. I really do. The problem is, I've tried Linux several times in the past, and today I still run into the same problems I have in the past. Really simple stuff. How do I install a program? Ok, I discovered rpm's and even used a couple. Once the program is installed, where did it go? How do I start it? These things are really simple, and everyone is still arguing over spatial interfaces. My mother could never deal with this level of complexity. Consider this my plea. I dislike Microsoft from many, many perspectives. I paid the extra money to switch to a Mac at home because of this; however, I really enjoy building and customizing my own systems, so I keep a PC around for gaming and those occasions you just "need a PC". Plus, Apple is very fond of releasing new versions of their operating system every year and then not making program updates available to users with "old" versions. The upgrade cycle is going to bankrupt me. I would be happy to pay for Linux, and I would shout to all my friends and relatives from the rooftop if I knew of an alternative operating system that I felt confident they could use. I think that all of the issues brought up in this usability review hit the nail on the head. I'm hopeing deep down inside that the community will read and take to heart these considerations.
Ah, I figured one of the apps actually used it after install. In that case, the dev made a bad choice, but really, its not a big deal.
I didn't look into it too closely, since I use Gentoo - my whole system depends on Python.
I still think its a pointless complaint, though. Yelling about having a language installed when you're compiling software, even if its only used for an install script, seems pretty lame.
Your mathematics is impeccable; 3 tests of 5 users each should, with those assumptions, find less of the original bugs than 1 test of 15 users. That isn't very rational, but when was math ever rational? :-)
What you didn't consider, though, is that the designers make changes after every test with 5 users. So after the first test finds 80% of the problems, they are corrected, but perhaps some new ones are introduced. The new users find 80% of the original problems that were undiscovered, AND 80% of the new problems. And then there's another iteration.
The advantage, therefore, is that you discover almost all the original problems and also get to try out possible fixes and uncover problems with the fixes
No, but an error message with some context and a user friendly message would be nice. My mother does not understand mount or unmount. She would understand, "CD-ROM drive cannot eject because it is in use." Is that such a terrible thing?
There are no fully featured, complete applications which mimic KDE/GNOME programs like Konsole or gnome-terminal -- that is, no console/terminal programs that support MDI so that you don't need to waste real estate on the task bar for each of the many command line boxes you might open in MS Windows. I eventually was able to get KDE working in Cygwin, but it's pretty slow on this 550MHz PIII.
I set up ion (it took a *long* time to find a version that would compile on cygwin, though) in a fixed-sized X11 session and gave it konsole-like keybindings (so that I could Shift+Left and Shift+Right to move between terminal sessions. So it's like I have an MDI terminal app. It's normally bash, but I can also get it to run cmd.exe (though Tab completion and history is broken when I try to go into this mode).
It's very cool. I also used ion in Linux when my Duron-800 system started having capacitor problems on its motherboard (it would crash out of Win32 and X11 sessions using full-fledged window managers). I learned a lot about getting full functionality of my system in regular tty modes (fbtv, fbxine, aumix and giFTcurs rule!).
I haven't tried it in FreeBSD. I took too much perverse glee in having an employer give me carte blanche with respect to setting up our web/mail/wap/ldap/im server, so I was perfectly happy to load it up with a full KDE 3.2.3 and OpenOffice setup, even though it's a thousand miles away and not connected to a monitor(!).
Disclaimer: I actually did set up the server well, and I'm very good with keeping it running, to the point where it's reliably saved the employees from the *other* servers we use.
--
-JC
http://www.jc-news.com/coding/freedom/
Seeing how it will probably never end ;)
So, I for one welcome our new Fluxbox Overlord !
Read the 1 page documentation on its keyboard shortcuts and you'll never use a different window manager again. Thinking about going back to KDE gives me heartburn.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And which version would be free? I just tried the coupon code on all of them (as well as trying linspire as the coupon code) and it didn't work.