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KDE Developers and Usability Folks on Cooperation
sultanoslack writes "Over at NewsForge a story just popped up on the usability experts from OpenUsability and some of the issues on working with KDE development teams, specifically the KDE PIM team. There's some interesting content on the different working styles of the two groups as well as a little bit on some of the improvements that were part of the recent KDE 3.4 release."
This post made with KFirstPost (TM).
Compiled 12.05.2005. They are customized for my own needs and are not representative.
Promotion as a happy KDE user. Proving that KDE is quite usable for me as is. See it as a gesture of friendly offering from my side. People interested to know how KDE from SVN TRUNK looks like can have a free peek.
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"Open Usability - Mission Statement
OpenUsability.org is a project that brings open source developers and usability experts together.
The idea behind is simple: There are many Usability Experts who want to contribute to software projects. And there are many developers who want to make their software more usable, and - as a consequence - more successful. "
I'm going to ask because no one else will. How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?
"Folks"? "Bit"? "Some content"?
There was this bit on this news site, that sounded like something said in the hall by my office, like.
I just have a hard time taking KDE serious because they can't have anything without a K in the name.
Just wanted to share my excitement about this.
I think it's great that the KDE Devs have no problem acknowledging that KDE could even be better if it focuses more on usability.
Don't get me wrong, KDE is far from the usability nightmare some folks want to make it, however it certainly has issues and it certainly can use some polish. (As can probably any other environment out there for that matter)
Now getting usability expert on board to solve these issues sure is the right way and if KDE 3.4 is anything to judge from, there are great things to come for KDE.
Rock on!
Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't have the only screenshot on the whole kpilot page making it look like the thing barely works:
...
/dev/pilot does not exist /dev/pilot /dev/pilot
KPilot has been reported to cause data loss
Starting KPilot daemon
Daemon status is 'not running'
Pilot device
Trying to open
Could not open device
The thing might work great, but that screeny certainly isn't confidence instilling.
http://pim.kde.org/components/kpilot.php
Actually...I never read the article ;)
Before some people start jumping up and mention how great GNOME is and how clean everything is and that they have usability and whatever, better get a look a this screenshot.
As you can see, and I know GNOME people are highly interested to bash this article down to nirvana, you figure out that GNOME itself is far from perfect and needs some huge usability studies on their own.
So comparing KDE with Windows (as some GNOME people did above) will get you nowhere. Before ranting about other Environments start looking on your own shit first. Look at all the different Toolbar types. One with Icons, one with Text below Icons, then another one has drag handles, different sizes of Toolbars etc.
Sure, I have a lot of choices under GNU/Linux. Too bad that for every choice I make I become more and more limited.
Bored? Browse Slashdot with a +6 modifier for Troll comme
The OpenUsability Portal says IT does not meet its own usability requirements!
Boy does Ion3 ever kick ass.
great. maybe they will get rid of those huge tooltips when you mouse over the links on the panel
I can think of MS-Office, whose menu bar icons can be re-ordered in any way wanted. When one "squeezes" or forces another menu bar to share the same area with another, this is possible with arrows indicating the availability of other items beyond the arrow.
That's my wish.
Why should everyone want to work together with GNOME ? I mean GNOME has caused a lot of damage and alienated a huge amount of their userbase. GNOME needs to work out the shit on their own first before advising others howto do it.
This is one of the best news I've heard in years.
The Raven
The work they have done with KDE 3.4 speaks volumes about the success and the potential of these efforts. If you had problems with the 'clutter' of KDE before (I never had I might add) and haven't tried KDE 3.4... you should. And they did it without frustrating their present userbase: no features were removed, they were just reorganized. This seems to be the difference between gnome and kde approach to usability. GNOME seems to have the 'less is more' mantra, while KDE has the 'more, better organized' mantra. Both have its merits btw - I can very well imagine that GNOME's approach suits some user's taste better, so no flames please. Me, I love every feature, and those that I don't use can be easily removed (more easily than in previous KDE iterations).
It is also interesting to see how developers had to be "converted" to cooperate with openusability folks - and it is really nice to hear that this has been a success story so far (11 KDE projects already work closely with openusability - and what's more, they enjoy it :) For instance:
"The reports produced by OpenUsability are, according to Adam, "full of clear, concrete ideas that are well-reasoned, that have an overall vision, and that follow principles. They are also an appropriate length, without being too long or vague."
Nice!
Is it only me who finds that KDE Print just has too many icons, buttons and configuration options? Just take a look at this: http://printing.kde.org/screenshots/. Without intimately knowing the system/environment you are working at, it might be impossible to setup a printer. It happened to me once...and I am not that much of a newbie. Or is it that I am not that bright?
The ones that sometimes decide stay there forever even after you move the mouse, until you bring up another tooltip? What's up with that?
Mod Grantparen as "-1 Did not even take the five seconds required to look on the page itself"
You mean the ones you can turn off any time you damn well please and never have to see again?
No matter what I say I'll get blasted per usual so here goes, sure kde "seems" more consistent & integrated than gnome but personally it seems like nothing but a windows ui hack, looks just like it dont it? I'm all for choice but after hearing so much about how crappy the win interface is what do we get in kde, same old thing. I use xfce4 exclusively and will never change. Let's hear from some programmers/designers on what constitutes a good albeit (subjective) interface help me bring my karma back to positive!
Step out of the box and enjoy life
great. maybe they will get rid of those huge tooltips when you mouse over the links on the panel
Right-click the panel, select configure, in layout click on appearance and uncheck show tooltips and you won't see them anymore.
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
maybe they will get rid of those huge tooltips when you mouse over the links on the panel
I totally agree. I ended up turning that off. What ever happened to icon zooming? I liked that, but the only choice (that I could find) was the tooltips... *sigh*
On a side note, has anyone else had a problem with KDE 3.4 where when you download something to your desktop (firefox, mozilla and konquerer do this.. haven't checked others) no icon appears? You can go to your desktop from a CLI and the file is there, but refreshing the desktop etc... does not help it to appear? I have found the only way to get them to appear is to right-click and create a new directory, then voila, new icons. I have had this happen on several machines with different distros. Some had an old kde profile, others a brandy-new one. I have looked at KDE's bug tracker to no avail.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Enya? Egad man!
Here's what I did today. I went to CompUSA and bought a 160GB Ultra ATA Drive. I popped open my Mac G4 and installed it. Then I partitioned the drive and installed OSX. Next I installed Ubuntu. Awesome distro. First time I've ever installed Linux on any machine anywhere. First thing I noticed: the email setup was different from standard practices. Next thing I noticed: Open menus and screens left trails on the monitor. Third thing: Gimp locked and the usual keyboard combinations to force quite didn't work. What I'm trying to say is STANDARDIZE, STANDARDIZE, STANDARDIZE! Take a class in consumer behavior for once in your lives! The user experience in Linux doesn't have to match the Mac or Windows experience, but atleast go for some sort of intuitive commonality.
Here's what I did today. I went to CompUSA and bought a 160GB Ultra ATA Drive. I popped open my Mac G4 and installed it. Then I partitioned the drive and installed OSX. Next I installed Ubuntu. Awesome distro and the first time I've ever installed Linux on any machine anywhere. First thing I noticed: the email setup was different from standard practices. Next thing I noticed: Open menus and screens left trails on the monitor. Third thing: Gimp locked and the usual keyboard combinations to force quite didn't work. What I'm trying to say is STANDARDIZE, STANDARDIZE, STANDARDIZE! Take a class in consumer behavior for once in your lives! The user experience in Linux doesn't have to match the Mac or Windows experience, but atleast go for some sort of intuitive commonality.
The *first* thing these teams need to do is fix bugs! I've never seen a bug-free installation of any flavor of Linux (assuming the installation works at all), and most of those bugs are GUI related. Usability should be right up there, but after bug fixes. Personally, I think that the KDE and Gnome teams should work on 1. Fixing bugs 2. Usability and THEN 3. New features. Usability isn't particulaly useful if the basics still don't work properly.
I don't respond to AC's.
It's not tool-tips per se that are the problem.
Windows *cough*, for example, uses small, relatively discreet tool-tips when you mouse-over something. Goodness knows why KDE apparently decided to use those honking big annoying tool-tips. I wouldn't want to turn tool-tips off so much as turn them down.
I feel sad that I need to explain this picture. Look closer to it. Now look again a bit more close to it.. No... that's close enough..
This screenshot explains a lot to us. We don't care for the Toolbar structure nor do we care for the Menu structure. We only look at the appearance.
We see Toolbars with ICONS only, we see Toolbars with TEXT beneath the ICONS, we see Toolbars with mixed entries as ICONS and TEXT, we see Toolbars which have a drag handle, we see Menu with draghandle, we see Toolbars without drag handle we see Menu without drag handle.
Now what does tell us this ? It tells us that there is something wrong if we ask the question why is this the case. Looking over to the GNOME HIG as well as knowing the facts that GNOME wants to be a desktop environment as well as a development plattform. We need to ask ourselves what the aim of a desktop environment and developer plattform is. The aim is to provide a set of bottom libraries (called a framework) that offers the developer to create applications that feel coherent. Looking the same, working the same, behaving the same as in a real environment. Do you want to have your kitchen filled up with different furniture or your living room ? One seat from type Y the other from type Q the other from Z. They simply do look disharmonic.
Now we need to look a bit closer to it and we figure out that GNOME offers for historic reasons different ways to create Windows. Now imagine this, you are a user and you want for some reason icons only on your toolbar or you want no images in the menu. You go into the preferences section and select 'icons only' for toolbars and 'no images' for menus. After that you realize that 3/4 of the applications are not behaving correctly.
Looking closer to the screenshot you also realize that the toolbars are not just behaving differently they also are in different sizes (height). I am not saying that such things can't be found on other architectures but I find it quite ridiculous and embarrassing naming GNOME together with MacOS X and even say it's as clean and as aesthetical pleasing as MaxOS X while the above screenshot clearly demonstrates that this is not the case.
I could easily go into deeper detail and get into deep detail like ars technica would do it in their reviews but I keep myself from wasting time here. All in all people should get enough from the screenshot to understand that something ain't right there.
If the GNOME hackers would be that skilled then they wouldn't have caused such an irritation as shown there. GNOME is a big construction lot as it is now.
I believe you mean uncheck 'Enable icon mouseover effects', if you're referring to KDE 3.4.
leaving 'show tooltips' on allows things to show that tiny yellow box with the description text in it, instead of the giant bubble that fades in.
Andrew
I am not trying to insult them, but I often wonder if they are idiots.
Yes, this will cause flame, but let me tell you why.
After years and so many releases, I don't see much difference. I still cannot see a single place that I can remove software that I install. The task panel still not resizable using the mouse. And when you resize, the icons get larger (what good is that?)
When install softwares, most of the times, I still have to find out where the heck it went to (which directory). Why don't they all make an entry in the menu like the M$ does.
There's so many other problems. For example, first click on the address bar of firefox in windows would highlight it, so I just type in new address. In Linux, that just put a cursor there.
I am not sure about the latest Linux version, but Mandrake 10.01, or RH E3, I can't find the tool bar for folders to go up, next, previous.
In the early days, I heard Linux uses little memory, swap algorithm are good, but when I use it, boy, with little memory, it's slow to a crawl (when I ran Websphere on 256 M machine). With a very fast machine, it still takes along time to start up. And applications still take a long time to start up.
People talks about Linux never taken over Windows, or OOo never take M$ Office if they're the same. That's stupid argument. It's because it's not there yet.
Just think that, if I give you M$ windows and charge $200.0 and another identical copy for $0.00, but with a diff. name, which one would you take?
My point is that, if you try to catch up to M$, there's nothing wrong with that. Even immmitate them. They do that all the time. It's how good you're catching up, or trying to immitate them.
Same for OOo, if it's just like M$ Office, but cost $0.00, I take that anytime. No need for single more feature then M$ Office.
Oops. My bad. I was sitting at 3.3 at the time. Yeah, what he said. ;-)
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
I'm really a KDE fan, for the most part. Gnome does have its strengths, though -- like, the gnome panel is more flexible and robust, and gapplets seem a better concept than the system tray. But KDE is far more integrated and feature-rich, by light-years. However, Gnome's strength is in the apps that run on GTK: Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, Evolution, Beagle, OpenOffice, Eclipse, and well -- Gnome's games kick the shit out of KDE's shoddy selection. Why do developers choose to write these great apps with GTK instead of QT? I'm not familiar with GUI development on Linux, so could someone who maybe is familar with both toolkits enlighten me? Also, is there performance loss when running GTK apps under KDE? Is there extra load to have widgets from both toolkits running? Thanks!
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
.. by looking at this picture demonstrating the strengths in GNOME construction lot. Have you ever spent some time looking at your applications appearance a bit closer ? Look at the Toolbar for example, different styles, different size, different behaviors, also look at dialogs and look at the Buttons, some are in the corner, some have an offset, some are 10 pixels wide from each other, others are 6 pixel, ever looked at the GNOME print dialogs ? Some apps allow printing of current page, others don't and even others don't even show a print dialog at all. I think you should clearly investigate into GNOME a bit more before ranting about other solutions.
for two things, which I really wish to see improved (disclaimer: I still use 3.3 since that's the latest stable one in Gentoo, so I apologize in advance if these have been improved in 3.4):
(1) Why on earth do icons have to be rearranged whenever a Window is minimized or resized!? I consider it affecting file management a lot - I really wish I could put icons into groups in one window, then minimize that and still have them grouped when I maximize it again (e.g. after having minimized it to open another folder from the Desktop).
(2) Please have an option to only allow one window with the same path to be open at one time - i.e. maximize/bring to front the window which is already opened from that folder instead of opening a new one. I know that some people want to have several windows from the same folder opened if they have many files in the same folder (and should have that option) but I really hate it when only part of the path name is shown and I thus I either have to look through several minimized windows in Kicker (if I have several subfolders with the same name) or open a folder again even though I know that I already have it open in another window to get the right one (getting an even more filled Kicker).
Other than those two complaints I consider KDE much better than Windows in terms of usability - I consider the configuration possibilities much more logical: Everything can be configured through Control Center or any specific thing by right-clicking wherever that specific thing is (such as with what application to open which file etc.). Windows is ridiculous - I cannot understand what people at MS have been thinking when they've put some configuration options in the Control Panel and others in Folder Options.
Now I want to share something with you:
Apple plundered and raped KDE of their one and only gem KHTML and wisely chose to ignore the ridiculous concoction of bloated unusable crap that the K desktop environment is.
That's tough shit. Lets have three cheers for Apple for being so cool and trendy.
Apple is the new Linux. Linux is dead.
Steve Jobs is like....God. do0ooo0ode...
When you have such big mistakes in your "article" it's really hard to take it seriously and it makes one mistrust the rest of the content and your conclusions, since your research are lacking. Your big mistake: the QPL are an Open Source license, approved by OSI and generally free. In short form QPL are the license you use on Qt when writing open source software not licensed under the GPL.
Why, I believe I'm qualified in these fields. Mostly the latter, though.
The metrics for a good developer and a good ui expert are different. An apples to oranges comparison, and as the little UI spats we've seen. Even observers can't come to a consensus, staring at the same painting, they are.
"Each member [openusability.org] has an "OpenUsability Peer Rating" (borrowed from Advogato [advogato.org]) and a Skills Profile. Not every member takes advantage of this but it seems like a good framework."
A nice framework, much as slashdot's numerical scale and friend, foe are good frameworks. Really the issue is the same as encountered in the "OS science journals" stories, and just as open to abuse. Would you really want doctors to be based on such a framework? Is he good enough to operate on you? Let's see what pollsters say.
"So, I guess a usability expert can prove he's a usability expert by proving the ideas he proposes"
In the meritocrity that's OSS, can you think of a better way?
"So, the usability experts can't make their own website usable but they're going to tell KDE what to do?"
I noticed that when I visited the site. That's what prompted the original question. Walk the walk, don't just talk the talk.
"But the easiest way to verify actual usability experts are by comparing their statements to the usuall comments about usability you find on OSNews. If they match, they are NOT usability experts only whiners and it's best to ignore them."
Thank you for saying this, Mr observer. Evanbd? Still think observers are going to be the best judge of what's good, and what isn't?
" Mod Grantparen as "-1 Did not even take the five seconds required to look on the page itself""
Already answered AC. Wish I had your faith in the philosophy "Because we said so".
"both GNOME and KDE suck big fat balls when it comes to the user experience."
Well that's enough reason to use them. How many DE environment's do you know that give you a free blow job?
Seriously I think the majority of DE's suck. regardless of what OS you're talking about.
Follow this simple rule and you'll be a usability expert in mere weeks: If someone asks you if you know X, reply that you invented X, or that you are God's gift to the field of X, or that due to complex philosophical principles that X is simply a manifestation of your own greatness. Sure, you may say that about the wrong thing and find yourself performing emergency open heat surgery but how hard can it be? You should be able to figure out how to work a heart and if you can't, just post an insightful critique of the heart's maintenance interface on the Internet, link it to kde.org and hopefully whoever designed the human body will read it and make the necessary changes before next time you need to operate.
As a matter of fact, how about you hang around on the gnome forums for a few days, you'll see how it's done.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Absolutely! I hate it when people think they can act like typical arrogant consumers when interacting with volunteers.
The perfectly usable interface would have no customisation options. Because it wouldn't need to. No, not even setting colours / wallpapers - the goal of a UI is to be totally transparant, and theres only a need for such cosmetic changes if the interface falls short of this goal. Of course (imho) the current user interface paradigm of monitor + input device (kb/mouse usually) is physically incapable of supporting a perfect UI - to achieve that we will need fully immersive environments. And even then, i'm not totally convinced that a totally transparant UI isn't an impossible goal.
"Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
KPDF has seen such major improvements in usability in 3.4 that I was amazed, it is one of the best if not the best PDF readers in existence currently. Adobe could learn a lesson from KPDF. I really hope they wont follow the same approach as Gnome, just dumbing everything down and leaving the users who really need features like SCP over VFS, Tabbing and Splitting in Konqueror etc.. standing in the rain. But so far it looks very good. They did not dumb anything down, but understood usability to make a better ui but leave the power functions in (which can be locked out via kiosk if needed) One of the biggest problems Gnome had, was that they went the usability for idiots way and left their main base, which mostly are power users standing in the rain, the way, we take it out you will never have it in again.
Windows programs are very consistent, just take one simple example like the search key, it's allways ctrl-F. No wait, it's allways ctrl-B. No wait, it's F4. Or shift-F3. I mean, in just about every windows program I can search by trying only four different key combinations, and when I finally hit the right one, the others will only have done things like forwarding the mail I'm trying to search in to someone else (ctrl-F in outlook) or something like that.
The API, the consistency, the HIG, ....
Its a pleasure to write apps using Qt, a horror using GTK. GTK is far too unstable, has a terrifying API, is badly documented, and has serious flaws in the usability (try to tab around in GQView, for example - you get stuck in the line widget because it eats the tab keypresses), and many GTK apps simply don't look professional. Compare aMule and eMule. Which one has the better UI? (I'm aware that aMule uses wxWidgets, but this one is in turn based on GTK).
OK, OK, I *am* biased against GTK. But everybody is biased in some sort. Of course there are serious flaws within Qt (the installation is horrible, and compiling takes ages, both Qt itself and Qt programs). But the thing is that Qt has a superior API - its lightyears ahead. That, combined with the good documentation, is a good reason to choose Qt over GTK.
But, most people bash Qt not because of technical issues, but because of the license. That is a BIG problem, because it is seen as "lame" to use Qt for apps, because you are using something "non-OS". So, the rule is: use the one that has the most liberal license, even if it is not the best one.
I for one stick with Qt, and ignore that lies about the license. I don't blame anyone for sticking with GTK, but I do get annoyed when I am accused of NOT using GTK. "You are using PROPIETARY STUFF! You traitor!" This is exaggerated, but thats the way many religious zealots see it.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
on earth who should be designing user interfaces are developers. Because we already know the answers we often assume we know the questions. We're constrained by widgets, HUI Guidlines, and a knowledge of how the underlying framework works and, almost by definition, we think differently to our end users.
We desperately need a 'language' or F/OSS IDE that an art/psycology grad can get to handle with little or no training that allows them to be as expressive as photoshop or dreamweaver and yet know no code.
Congrats to KDE. This has got to be a step in the right direction.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
That's right, Apple keep screwing them over and the KDE team keep objecting. What's wrong with the KDE team ?
I don't mind if someone, anyone, everyone or noone wants KDE focusing more on usabilty issues (although my currently configured KDE desktop is the best desktop I've ever used), just please promise me something: please don't let any of the Gnome HIG people around. I don't want no more desktop4dumbs around.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.