Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

KDE 3.3 UI, Evaluated By 7 Real Users

Posted by timothy on from the and-those-are-the-important-kind dept.

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?"

3 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My take on a few things... by BenjyD · · Score: 3, Informative

    far too many options shown by default:

    An example of KDE having too many options:
    There is actually an option "draw borders around maximized windows" and it's on by default. It's not actually called that of course, it's called "allow moving and resizing of maximized windows", but it has no effect on moving any more. Why would anyone want a border around a maximized window, making the fitt's law violations even worse? Let alone an option for it. Why not just replace the option with a sensible default.

  2. Re:Don't know where by mini+me · · Score: 2, Informative

    KDE is on about the same level as Windows for ease of use as far as I'm concerned. The problem with KDE is that it has the worst defaults. If these seven people sat down at a default KDE install I can see why they made those complaints.

    If you spend some significant time customizing KDE it turns into a beautiful desktop environment. But the average user isn't apt to customize anything beyond maybe the desktop background so I believe KDE needs to see some more sensible defaults in the future.

  3. Re:Too many options by VitaminB52 · · Score: 2, Informative
    I don't want to make 101 decisions when I work on my computer. I want sensible defaults and not have to care about plethoras of unneeded options.

    What's an unneeded option for one user can be a must-have option for another user.
    E.g.: if you don't have old software (or buy/download new software when you get a new OS), then having an option for backward compatibility is unneeded. But if you use old software, and want to / have to continue the use of this old software, then a compatibility option is a must-have.