48 Hours Enduring Ubuntu 5.04

ceswiedler writes "Matthew Thomas lists 69 interface issues he has with the new Ubuntu release "Hoary Hedgehog", ranging from desktop and Nautilius behavior to Firefox and Evolution. They're serious interface issues, he claims, but he also says that Ubuntu 5.04 "is the first Linux-based system I have encountered that is tolerable enough for me to use for everyday work." That's a rather backhanded compliment...the suprising thing is that he's an interface designer working for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu." As Thomas mentions, "Many of these flaws probably exist in other Gnome-based systems, and some of them also exist in Microsoft Windows and/or Mac OS."

Comments

An indication of the flaws in the F/OSS community

[offline]

Judging from the complaints I'm seeing so far in the postings to this story, the issues that have been brought up over and over again with respect to usability in F/OSS software are still alive and well here.

Which is, of course, not a surprise to anyone literate.

The thing with this list, and I'll agree that TFA is pretty picky, is that they are all little things that, much like the Uncanny Valley, are the key to making the step from half-baked to user-friendly. Bear in mind, please, that I am writing this from a 96-hour old installation of Hoary, myself, and I'm quite pleased with it. However, the issues he has mentioned overlap rather thoroughly with issues that I've had.

I'd like to see more open source software make it in the real world -- I've tried to get my girlfriend to use this laptop, but, well, I've lost that battle from the first time she had to ask me how to make movies play (and we're not talking about someone clueless here, either!). So, something with a bit more polish is going on here this weekend, and I'm back to using the laptop for only web surfing and movie watching.

Anyway...

Seriously, guys. Yes, he's a nitpicker. But he's also right. Polish is everything, and polish means picking at every little thing.

Hmm...

[nickos]

"15. Dialogs themselves are not modal: they let you continue to use the parent window. This allows such nonsensical situations as a "Save as JPEG" dialog for a Gimp image that no longer exists, and a Print dialog for a Web page that is no longer open or even still in Firefox's cache."

Fair enough, but sometimes dialog boxes should be modeless (a find/replace dialog box in a text editor for instance). Remember Larry Tessler (from Apple and PARC) used to wear a t-shirt saying "DON'T MODE ME IN" - in general, modal interfaces (including dialog boxes) suck. They have their place but noone who knows anything about user interfaces should make such a blanket statement.

"16. The mouse pointer does not hide itself when it is stationary and I start using the keyboard. As a result, it frequently gets in the way of what I am typing or reading."

Hiding the mouse pointer completely is usually a pretty stupid idea. It's quicker for the user to move the pointer out of the way than it is to find a hidden pointer when they need to use the mouse again...

Re:Hmm...

[Blakey Rat]

Hiding the mouse pointer completely is usually a pretty stupid idea. It's quicker for the user to move the pointer out of the way than it is to find a hidden pointer when they need to use the mouse again...

Try it in MacOS. Seriously, hiding the mouse cursor should be done when:

1) The user is typing text and the insertion point is nearing where the cursor is. (Say, within 25-50 pixels or so.)

2) The mouse is over a scrollable window and the user scrolls it with the keyboard. (If the user scrolls it with the mouse, the cursor is likely already out of the way.)

MacOS does this right. I'm constantly annoyed in Windows when I'm reading a web page and I scroll to the bottom (with the keyboard) and the mouse cursor is sitting right atop some crucial letter in a sentence, so I have to move my hands away from the keyboard and tap the mouse to move it out of the way, interrupting the flow of my reading.

As for locating the mouse, you can't find the position of the cursor by looking for it on the screen anyway, so it's not like hiding it makes much of a difference.

(Seriously, try it. Look away from your screen, have somebody else reposition the cursor, then look back and see how quickly you can find it without touching the mouse, then with touching the mouse. Hint: You'll find that without touching the mouse it takes several seconds to find, but by moving the cursor you can find it almost instantly-- eyes track motion, not stationary objects. The reason you can normally find your cursor quickly isn't because it's highly visible, but because your brain remembers where you left it. Apple did a *ton* of psychological research on issues like this while they were designing their GUI, and it shows.)

Re:Wow, this is almost funny

[Short Circuit]

That you are accustomed to it doesn't mean it is a good way of doing things.

Unless someone can convince me I'll be more productive with the new system, I'm going to do things exactly the way I am. Forcing a new system on me will force me to find a way around it. I'm efficient the way I'm doing things now. Requiring me to learn a new system will result in lost productivity.

For example: Remember when GNOME switched Nautilus from tree-based to "spatial", or whatever it is that they call it? I still use GNOME, but I've stopped using Nautilus to browse with. Instead, I use gnome-terminal. It's faster and more efficient for me to have presences in multiple locations on my filesystem via a tabbed terminal than multiple windows.

it's good enough, and the analysis is misguided

[cahiha]

1. Every window that has menus puts them in a separate menu bar inside the window. [...] Ubuntu is not entirely ignorant of Fitt's Law

What he neglects in his analysis is that (1) that's where most users expect menu bars to be, and familiarity usually trumps Fitt's law, and (2) Fitt's law is a red herring anyway. Designing a UI based on Fitt's law is like picking a car based on the size of its spoiler or picking a girlfriend based on the size of her boobs--someone may have enough of a fetish with it to do it, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

While a few of the comments suggest minor useful improvements (e.g., multiple new windows should be cascaded, not stacked), much of rest of the analysis is filled with many more similarly irrelevant comments. And many (most?) of those comments apply to proprietary desktops as well.

The question isn't how many nits one can pick with Ubuntu, the question is whether it is good enough for regular users, and I think it is. In fact, one can even argue that it is easier to use and more consistent than the proprietary alternatives.

Re:Matthew Thomas is a lunatic

[QuantumG]

As evidenced here on Slashdot, he's an expert in his field who is ignored because he doesn't care to explain to all you non-experts why what you are doing is shit. Instead he says here's my professional opinion: fix this, this and this, and here are my credentials, to which people say nah, I'm just going to ignore your expert opinion because I think my uninformed gut feeling is better. How could you not leave in a huff?