KDE 3.3 UI, Evaluated By 7 Real Users

sgtrock writes "UserInstinct has an article that documents the reactions to KDE 3.3 by 7 users with limited or no Linux background. By and large, they found KDE intrguing, but far too busy. They all complained about some pretty basic UI issues; no stars echoed while the password was typed, anti-aliased fonts off by default, far too many options shown by default, etc. Most had minor UI issues as well; some of which were KDE specific, others that weren't. All in all, I would have to regard this test KDE 3.3's UI as somewhat disappointing. Especially since KDE strives so hard to provide a consistent and easy to use UI. IMO the single biggest issue is probably the overwhelming number of options that are exposed to a first-time user. Personally, I'm a guy who likes to tweak almost everything on a UI, so I love the way that KDE works. However, I have seen myself just how quickly beginners get turned off by the very busy option screens. There must be a better way of showing a sane number of options while still allowing power users to access the more esoteric ones. Anyone have any thoughts?"

Comments

Re:My take on a few things...

[OmniVector]

i consider myself a fairly competent desktop user (considering i'm a programmer, and gui developer) and i despise kde. despite the fact that some of those "advanced" features might even be useful for me. the simple fact is gnome is a lot easier to use on a day to day basis. i don't have to fool with serial searches through the menus/toolbars just to find what i'm looking for due to the sheer overwhelimg amount of features in kde. konqueror is an utter mess, and anyone who thinks otherwise has no objectivity.