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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."
Apparently, usernames are design flaws: "The login screen uses the term "username"." As is rebooting the computer: "The login screen uses the term "reboot". (My shoes are fine as they are, thanks.)"
http://unelite.freelinuxhost.com - Rock/Scissors/Paper and RPGs shouldn't mix.
I hope Canonical isn't paying him much, seeing how the vast majority (all?) of the stuff he's bitching about is either GNOME or other specific apps and has nothing to do with Ubuntu.
And even if it were Ubuntu, I'm more worried about hardware detection than about 'shut down' being mispelled as shutdown'.
The guy is a genius. Sometimes I feel like compiling a list like this myself, but I rarely install a system from scratch, so it is difficult to point them back to a single source.
:-).
But Linux needs more people like. Interface bugs are bugs, because the confuse the user, and (thus) the software does not work for them. Calling the user "stupid" wont help either, because you are still stuck with the same user
The most obvious UI bug I remember is the GNOME pop up box when you exit a program without saving. They keep changing it, but it still makes me hesitate every time. It is just extremely nonintuitive. (Yes, and MacOS also took many revisions before they got it right. Microsoft this didn't get it...) Openoffice is a lot better, as is KDE.
Now if the developer would take these issues serious and fix them, Desktop Linux would be a lot closer already.
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.
C
--
Democracy would work just fine if people weren't so goddamned stupid.
because for someone so keen on user interface, I can't seem to figure out where on that page I'm supposed to click to get to the home page of his own website...
Perhaps in the future.
But the thing is, he says at the end: """ My boss, by the way, is Mark Shuttleworth. I'm working for his company, Canonical, as an interface designer. """
After almost 60 issues on general interface design and usability issues, he says he works for the promoter of this project. In a way, he's telling that these issues will not be overlooked in the future and future Ubuntu releases will try to solve this problem. And this brings me some confidence in the Ubuntu projects (although I may try Kubuntu, as I am biased toward KDE).
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Defect reports are by and large nitpicks. Many of these are even bigger than nitpicks. But that's what UI polish is all about. You get your car detailed, you don't expect them to leave a few streaks and smudges here and there, do you?
And he wasn't exactly using multiple exclamation points or making comments on how this rendered the whole thing unusable or shoddy. He simply listed defects and sometimes the reason this constituted a defect.
It's pathetic, the way some people create this personal attachment to software like this. It's not like he whitegloved your damn homes. If the GNOME developers share the reaction of the slashdot crowd, then frankly I too think he should shut up -- because he's otherwise wasting time and effort on a project that doesn't deserve any.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
He does have a few good points though, such as:
"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...
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.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
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.
In fact, you change users when switching to root.
No, it's like Apple's permission dialog or using "Run As..." in Windows XP. You don't change users, you just give the computer the authorization it needs to perform a specific task. Changing users imply that you logged out (or are using fast-user-switching.)
If Ubuntu's "Change User" dialog *actually changed users*, he'd see his desktop icons and backdrop change to the ones set by "root," he'd see all his settings for applications change to the ones set by "root," etc.
He's not complaining that the login screen in "xscreensaver" shows a clock, but that it's entirely different from the normal login screen in the system. Why should two screens that perform the exact same task look and behave differently? That's confusing to users, and it needs to be fixed.
(Even if you're coming from a pure "Unix hacker" point of view, you'd still say that it qualifies as duplication of effort and still say it needs to be fixed... why have two pieces of code that do the same task instead of having one piece of code that's called from bother locations?)
Now I agree that some of his complaints are off-base. For instance, menu capitalization is pretty arbitrary-- as long as it's consistant. Saying all menus must be in titlecase (although that's the standard in MacOS X and Windows) is wrong, but saying all menus must be in the *same* case is correct. But most of what he's saying are problems that actually need to be fixed, period, end of story.
Comment of the year
And to the other word, username is not really a word. I mean, it is, but I would agree with him that it would look better if it was written as "User Name" or something like that.
Yes, some of his complaints do boil down to a matter of him just becoming comfortable with the software (the send button on gaim complaint comes to mind...) but i think a lot of people agree that there is a lack of consistency in Linux Distros, but not a ton of effort has been put into the discussion of it, as far as it applies to specific "bugs". I think this is the next step for linux. Linux has most of the software and hardware support it needs, now it needs distro makers to help create distros that have ironed out the inconsistencies in the user interfaces and software.
"... A foot icon? What's that about, anyway? Ubuntu's logo isn't a foot."
It's the Gnome foot. He logged in using gnome. Does this mean if he had been using Kubuntu, he would have said, "What's with the K?"
He is obviously outside of his territory and discredits most of what he presents from his lack of common knowledge.
This is what Linux is all about, choosing what you want to use, gnome, kde, xfce, whatever. I think he missed this key point.
Ubuntu, the way linux should be.
Try Ubuntu FREE! --
Nonsense. The mouse cursor reappears when you move the mouse, which is how you find the mouse even if it is not invisible (do you really think people look all over the screen for the image of the arrow, rather than jiggle the mouse and look for the moving thing?).
His modal dialog comment is stupid, though. Getting rid of modal dialogs has been one of the big deals in improving the user interface experience. A real fix would be to avoid the inconsistent states, rather than the simple fix of going back to modal boxes. In his Gimp example, closing the image should maybe pop up a question "you were trying to save this to a file, are you sure you want to close it" and if they still close it, get rid of the dialog as well.
Sigh. I tried to rename a desktop icon by typing on it too. My keystrokes went no-where. That's so braindead. If I'm pressing keys on the keyboard obviously I want the computer to do something with them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Actually, he missed out on one UI bug in Evolution that makes me laugh. I wish I had a screenshot, but on fairly regular occasion, Evolution gives me an error message with a label saying, "Error: Success." Gets me every time :)
No comment.
"Caps Lock: Please include a way to easily disable this useless key. Nothing like accidently going into caps lock mode when you're working in Vi.. "
Ummm.
System > Preferences > Keyboard
Choose "Layout Options"
Choose "Control Key Position"
Choose "Make CapsLock an additional Control"
Not exactly easy, but at least it's GUI based.
"Gnome "Save Session": Please fix it or lose it. This feature is broken since forever, and even once it's disabled it still tries to restore the session from the "last save."
Yeah. It's pretty useless.
To someone not familiar with X11 programs, this might seem like a bug, but it certainly is not. As anyone who is familar with X11 programs knows, to copy something, all you need to do is highlight it. This means that if Firefox did auto-highlight the url every time you type in an address, you'd have your clipboard contents stolen from you. This is the reason that Konqueror includes a "Clear Location Bar" widget beside the location bar which does exactly what you want: clears the location bar, sets focus to it, and doesn't mangle your clipboard. There is a similar feature for Firefox if you install the extension for it.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Stop hitting on the guy now. Slashdot (read Ubuntu/Linux Lovers) have already had their revenge by getting Mathhews site /.ed
;) Picked on Ubuntu Did Ya?
Poor fella
Vulturo, Prince Of Darkness
You can change this behavior. Go to about:config and change "browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll" to true. This will select the contents of the address bar when you click on it. Problem solved.