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."

Comments

That's Kooperation

[Anonymous Coward]

This post made with KFirstPost (TM).

Re:That's Kooperation

[Joey Patterson]

This post made with KFirstPost (TM).

I noticed that KFirstPost(TM) uses code from KFlamebait(TM) and KTroll(TM), which are both GPL'ed. Now that's Kooperation!

Re:That's Kooperation

[filesiteguy]

Dang, kan I get that for my system? I'm only running 3.3....

Seriously, though, I love to hear these things...

KDE IS KOOL!

Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Screenshot1
Screenshot2
Screenshot3
Screenshot4

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[HillaryWBush]

I truly apologize for the incoherency of this, but I am a programmer and user interface designer from way back, so my posts are going to be simultaneously deeply structured and totally gnarly...

BLEAH. Positively BLEAH. Compared to regular Windows, it's more chromey, more toyish...the equivelent of eating ballpark sushi. Honestly, after a total of 3.4 versions, can't you usability rebels possibly come up with some good ideas, or at least copy some? User Interface is like enlightenment...you have to commit mental suicide and leave all the confusion behind, and you're not doing that.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[RayDude]

Speaking of enlightenment, have you seen Enlightenment 0.17?

Now that's new, different, powerful, and I can't wait until its done.

Raydude

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[molnarcs]

Are you aware of the fact that you can configure almost every aspect of KDE - including colors, icons, style? Also, KDE doesn't have its own distribution - so it is up to distro makers to change the default look to whatever they like.

...but I am a programmer and user interface designer Yeah, sure, and you have a degree in communication as well I assume? (BLEAH. Positively BLEAH.). (Come on mods, who modded that post interesting?)

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[friedmud]

What's funny is that people have been saying that for YEARS.

I used to use Enlightenment back in the day (and loved it) and even looked into helping out on the E17 effort several years ago. The problem is that they are a VERY tight nit group of developers and the way they completely throw out portions of their code (including core libraries) and refactor them at will makes it REALLY tough to get into the code.

I am not trying to put them down in any way. They are doing awesome work... just doing it slowly and in their own corner. Nothing wrong with that, but we are still going to have to wait for a while before we see it packaged up with our favorite distro.

Friedmud

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[Moofie]

I think you're selling yourself short. You could probably get another dozen or so illegible icons at the bottom of the screen if you just got rid of those pesky...what do you call 'em? Words. Yeah, words. Who needs 'em?

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[koko775]

I was going to say that I thought Windows wasn't particularly bad...but...you're RIGHT. BLEAH! Look at that crappy interface. You can't even tell what's supposed to go where and what button starts which program!

There's generic icons -- lots of them -- hardly any space for the task part of the taskbar (FADING IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR A USELESS, IF SOMEWHAT PRETTY, TASKBAR!), the weird bottom arrow for the scrollbar is confusing (I'll move my mouse to the top or use my mousewheel, thank you), and there's a bunch of icons that explain very little about what they do (on the taskbar and in Konqueror -- and last time I checked, both stars AND hearts were used to denote favorites)! The only redeeming feature would be a decent theme, but it's doesn't even look like the icons are consistent in feel and quality!

Those screenshots reflect a failing of open-source: their design is inconsistent, self-absorbed, cluttered, and useless. I'm all for universal contribution, but when it results in crap I'd rather use something that has some semblance of consistency: XFCE or Gnome, thankyouverymuch.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[CastrTroy]

OMG!!! Where's your taskbar? I don't understand how people operate with so little taskbar room. I need at least 2 rows. That way you can actually see which programs are running, and don't have to resort to grouping, which hides stuff and makes it take more clicks to actually find stuff. Here is a screenshot from my screen. Sorry, about the bad jpegness, but I do have bandwidth limitations.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[JebusIsLord]

The default taskbar looks nothing like his... he has a quicklaunch filling almost the entire thing.

And how is KDE anything except consistent?? Practically everything is a part of the core KDE packages, and they're very well integrated. Gnome pales in comparison!

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[HillaryWBush]

Are you aware of the fact that you can configure almost every aspect of KDE - including colors, icons, style?

Of course I am, and if I wasn't, I would just KNOW, because that's what designers like that do -- they put all the colors in some kind of configuration file and imagine that people can "customize the user interface!" I saw a hack once for MacOS X Cocoa that allowed you to hold down some modifier keys and drag buttons around in an app to really reorganize them. In fact you could drag them to another application and put them there, or to a floating toolbar or a menu. That's the beginning step of user interface customization.

In conclusion, molenarc, I think you are snarky to put pressure on the mods to put me down, because you are not as interesting as you think either.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[Quattro Vezina]

Ageed. Oddly enough, that's very much like what my panel layout looked like when I used to use KDE. Of course, I don't have a taskbar anymore, as I'm a happy Ion user now.

I didn't start to appreciate KDE's flexibility until I made my custom panel layout, which, as I said, was very similar to yours. There are a few differences (the biggest one being that my side panel was top-aligned, not bottom-aligned), but the basic idea is the same.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[10Ghz]

Those screenshots reflect a failing of open-source: their design is inconsistent, self-absorbed, cluttered, and useless.

The screenshots do not show the default desktop, it show how this particular user has set up his desktop. So it merely shows that you can customize KDE to your exact liking. And I don't see how that is a "failing of open source".

FWIW, my KDE-desktop looks like this. Quite a difference, no?

Please: if you want to complain about KDE, do not use some heavily modified desktop as your basis of complaining! The desktop shown on the previous screenshots are NOT what KDE looks like by default! It merely shows what this particular user prefers.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[leifbk]

I saw a hack once for MacOS X Cocoa that allowed you to hold down some modifier keys and drag buttons around in an app to really reorganize them. In fact you could drag them to another application and put them there, or to a floating toolbar or a menu. That's the beginning step of user interface customization.

That kind of functionality may be cool for a geek who knows what he's doing, but it's a total nightmare from the helpdesk point of view. I don't think that this enhances usability at all. On the contrary; in the hands of a configuration-happy noobie, it would probably render the desktop unusable faster than you can spell out "reorganize".

Usability isn't about "user interface customization". It's about a well thought out interface that the end user will be able to figure out how to interact with efficiently, thus actually minimizing the need for user customization.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[John Bokma]

Uhm... RISC OS 3.11 with some redesigned icons? It would be nifty if the good ideas of RISC OS were available, and the not so good ideas replaced. I had always the impression that KDE is just a mix of ideas borrowed from everywhere. And instead in being better, it's below average. Just my opinion, and based on an older version of KDE which might be blamed on the distributions I've been using. Also, a suggestion, drop the "application has to start with K" thing. It's even more annoying then !Draw, !Paint, !Edit on RISC OS.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[temcat]

Looks pretty. But I never understood why many people love such BIG launch buttons. It is only a waste of screen real estate. (Yes, and I'm speaking about Mac OS X, too: having application main menu at the top supposedly spares place on the desktop, but big launch buttons waste as much, if not more...)

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[10Ghz]

Well, those buttons are the apps I use most of the time (I have added a fourth button for Kontact in there since I took the screenshot). And while you might say that it wastes screen-space, I find it ALOT easier to hit those buttons than I could hit some tiny buttons (I tried it, didn't like it). And considering that I still have two rows dedidated to active tasks, together with application-grouping (active if taskbar gets full), I never ever run in to cases where my taskbar gets full.

So while I could save tiny amount of space by using small launch-buttons, the benefits outweight the downsides, IMO. But then again, this is just my way of doing things, other people have different ways for sure.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[CastrTroy]

Which is a good solution too. Either have a task bar and use it effectively, or don't have one at all. Taking up space with a taskbar that doesn't provide any useability is just stupid. I usually only use 1 desktop. This is because using windows at work I have trouble flipping between the 2 paradigms of single desktop and multi desktop, so I just stick with the single desktop.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[molnarcs]

Well, I didn't think that my post was particularly interesting, stating the obvious and all ;) On the other hand, you clearly missed the "They are customized for my own needs and are not representative." part of parent's post, so your Gollum act on KDE 3.4 was unresonable. Even if GP's screenshots were representative of the defaults of KDE, the point that for the end-user kde will look like the way its vendors customize still remains. :)

on second thought: maybe I took your post too seriously, but then, a funny mod would have been more appropriate :)

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[lav-chan]

No offence to you or the KDE project, but that is quite possibly the single ugliest desk top i have ever seen in my entire life.

.

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[TheLink]

You have two rows too?

Seems like it's just me but I don't like the way KDE orders the tasks when there's more than one row- from top to bottom, then only left to right.

I prefer the windows style - left to right, then top to bottom.

With MS Window's style when I close/remove a task, the tasks to the right do not all get shuffled vertically, only the leftmost and rightmost tasks are affected.

With KDE, ALL tasks to the right of the removed tasks end up on a diffent row. IMO that's bad useability.

So I submitted this as a feature request, but the dev didn't like the suggested behaviour.

Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[evanbd]

How do you know they're good developers? Who's going to do the vetting?

I think the answer is the same -- good work is evident to others in both cases, even if the observer isn't an expert.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[Chris Burke]

How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?

Simple. Usability Expert Experts, of course. They in turn are vetted by Expert Expert Experts, who are vetted by me in exchange for cash money or beer. The system is perfect.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[Spy der Mann]

How do you know they're usability experts?

Usability expert. N. Person determined to annoy the hell of a programmer if the tiniest detail in the user interface appears to SLIGHTLY bother him.
Adj. "RTFM killer."
Adj. "Joe User" to the Nth power.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[zbik]

I'm going to ask because no one else will. How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?

Each member has an "OpenUsability Peer Rating" (borrowed from Advogato) and a Skills Profile. Not every member takes advantage of this but it seems like a good framework.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[diegocgteleline.es]

"usability must be based in scientific facts, not in personal preferences"

So, I guess a usability expert can prove he's a usability expert by proving the ideas he proposes

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[Anthony Liguori]

My favorite part of the website:

Important Note: This portal is under construction. It is not finished, some functionality is missing, and it does not yet meet our usability standards.

So, the usability experts can't make their own website usable but they're going to tell KDE what to do?

If you're a KDE developer, I've got some land in Florida you may be interested in...

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[Klivian]

>How do you know they're usability experts?
In the case of OpenUsability.org the initiators of the site are professionals, making their living of their usability company. It may mark them as experts:-)

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.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[The_Wilschon]

"Usability Experts": read "Proverbial Grandmothers"

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[beholder]

An Efficiency Expert here.

You may want to remove one level of indirection here and charge Expert Experts directly.

It is a bit more work, but much more money. :-)

That's what we have done with the Efficiency Expert Expert Experts. Boy were they sore.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Great!

[MemoryDragon]

Every desktops has major usability problems. Apple for instance has the dreadful finder, and some UI functions are still so slow, that I constantly want to bang my head in between. And there is no clean installation tracker for programs which like to install themselves not cleanly the package way, but clutter themselves all over the system.

KDE has the configuration console, although it has become much better with the new icon view mode which basically cleans some a major point (option clutter in the treeview) dramatically.

The gnome approach, altough the UI itself is very consistent, is dreadful, they simply do it the way either eat it or leave it, but we dont give power users any alternatives, and usability for them is to strip any major function of a program until you only get the basic functionality. A missing compound document model does not help either with office apps, where it should be natural do drag things from one app into the other . (Hint drop bonobo and go for kparts)

The Windows Administration console is even worse and moving that stuff to a html like interface with suboptions made things even worse, besides that Windows is a hotkey nightmare.

Re:Great!

[6Yankee]

it certainly can use some polish

No way! It's unusable enough in English!

Nice KPilot Screenshot

[lakcaj]

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:

KPilot has been reported to cause data loss

Starting KPilot daemon ...
Daemon status is 'not running'

Pilot device /dev/pilot does not exist
Trying to open /dev/pilot
Could not open device /dev/pilot

The thing might work great, but that screeny certainly isn't confidence instilling.

http://pim.kde.org/components/kpilot.php

Re:Nice KPilot Screenshot

[Anonymous Coward]

chmod 666 /dev/pilot would fix it

Re:K!!

[mattyrobinson69]

gmean glike gnome gapplications ior iapple iapplications "microsoft or" "microsoft microsoft" "microsoft applications"?

openperhaps openyou openmean openlike openbsd's openapps.

A little GNOME rant besides.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:A little GNOME rant besides.

[Anonymous Coward]

News flash:

both GNOME and KDE suck big fat balls when it comes to the user experience.

Re:A little GNOME rant besides.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a worthless test of usability...

You should take note of several things about that screenshot.

First, EasyTAG isn't a Gnome app, it's a GTK app. It doesn't use the GStreamer framework, or GnomeVFS, or GnomeUI, or GConf, so including it is incorrect.

Similarly for Abiword, that project has consistancy across platforms as a goal, and is also not a gnome project. It does go reasonably out of it's way to play nice with a Gnome environment, however. It should also be pointed out that the toolbar requirements of a word processor are very different than those of an email client, and I'd say having the buttons the same size across both would be less usable. This goes doubly if you're trying to win converts from Word.

The three real gnome applications in your screenshot each have 'File,' 'Edit,' 'View,' and 'Help,' along with two or three application specific menus. That seems about right. Also, the most commonly used/important functions from each set of menus is on the (similarly styled) toolbar, each with text beneath the icons(that's configurable system wide).

This random attack of yours might be useful if you actually made some suggestions about specific changes that would help, so let's hear some.

Re:A little GNOME rant besides.

[CastrTroy]

I can make any Desktop environment look like crap by putting thousands of icons and applets on every panel, and leaving no room for things like the actual task bar. Which should be about 2 levels high anyway, if you want to have that many windows open. Check out my screenshot

Re:A little GNOME rant besides.

[tomhudson]

that project has consistancy across platforms as a goal

Well, that's a pretty fucking stupid goal. Rather than make a bunch of custom objects and custom code that warps the program's interface to a "non-platform look" (and opens the door for more bugs, code bloat, etc) why not just let it look like it belongs on the platform its running on. After all, the person chose the platform for a reason. Maybe he or she actually LIKES the platforms' native look.

(yeah - I think swing was also a fuckup for the same reason)

Re:A little GNOME rant besides.

[donscarletti]

Wow, GNOME really is messy when you open up 9 programs, arrange them deliberately so that their toolbars waste the maximum amount of space and cover their panels with every icon that they can find. Clearly this is incontrovertible evidence that GNOME is utterly worthless.

Re:A little GNOME rant besides.

[lav-chan]

I agree so much, you don't even know. I can't stand using open-source cross-platform software on Windows. I don't have a ton of specific experience with stuff like that on UNIX, but on Windows it really really bothers me.

In older versions of Firefox, the scroll bars were generic; they didn't go along with how you had them in Windows. They've fixed this, but the menus and some of the interface behaviours are still wrong, the preferences panel looks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like any other preferences panel in the history of the universe (except probably like Thunderbird's, but that hardly counts), et cetera. This bothers me about the GIMP, Gaim, X-Chat, OpenOffice.... All the open-source programs for Windows look absolutely terrible, and (supposing that they at least function intelligibly, which most of them don't either) that fact alone often makes me not want to use them.

And don't even get me started on 'skins'.

How about working together with GNOME?

[mpontes]

Am I the only one who hates the way the whole GNU/Linux community is split up? There are already few apps (with a GUI) compared to Windows applications, if the community keeps splitting up, Linux will never pose a real threat to Windows in the desktop world. Your average PC user doesn't want to have to deal with a different look-and-feel every time he boots an application, so he'll be stuck with the apps that were developed for his desktop environment. Heck, I stick with Kopete because Gaim looks so damned ugly under KDE.

Sure, I have a lot of choices under GNU/Linux. Too bad that for every choice I make I become more and more limited.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[snorklewacker]

I like moves and deletes that don't take several minutes showing only "flying folders", and I like the fact that such operations don't completely abort the instant they hit a permissions error. I like having a decent command shell that isn't a slow emulated hack. I like being able to drag windows around with alt-drag and resize them with alt-rightdrag. I like virtual desktops even though I rarely ever use them. I like xkill.

I like software that doesn't suck. I don't care about threatening windows, because in my world, it's already lost -- I only use it when I have to, not because I want to. I don't complain too bitterly about it, because I can switch back pretty easily most of the time. What's this about taking over the world? I'd rather make the world nicer. Or at least mine.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[molnarcs]

Am I the only one who hates the way the whole GNU/Linux community is split up?

Unfortunately, no, you are not alone with this opinion. What you fail to see is that there developers are not droids. In other words, you can't think of them as a pool that you can shape into whatever form you like. You can't tell a GNOME developer to work for KDE because the latter has a better chance of success (as it seems now). The GNOME developer works on GNOME because that is what he wants to work on. And this is not necessarily a bad thing: competition between the two major desktop environments might be considered as a driving force behind the rapid growth of linux DEs actually.

For instance GNOME and KDE have incompatible aims - they approach usability from different perspectives ("less is more" vs. "more and more, better organized" to put it very simply). On the other hand, standardization of low level services/components might be a good thing, and work is already in progress (albeit I have to admit it is slow) to achieve that via freedesktop.org. Also, you have to be aware of the contradiction of your post: your problem is that there is too much and too few choice at the same time. You'd prefer to use GAIM instead of kopete (you have a choice) but because you choose KDE, you have to use Kopete for a consistent look (no choice). The question you need to ask is this: what is the problem with Kopete? What I'm trying to say is that KDE's application stack becomes more and more complete. They have their own, well integrated office suite (koffice). They have kopete, music players, webbrowser, even a viable gimp replacement for average needs (have you seen krita in koffice 1.4beta? - it is absolutely fascinating!) - and so on.

What needs to be done is to improve that application stack. So if Kopete is not fully satisfactory (you would like to use GAIM, don't you?) - than you should specify the problems. If a number of users agree with your claim - and that's the point of this article - you would be able to communicate your needs/problems to the developers, helping them improve the app you are currently 'forced' to use.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[delete]

Besides, simply use the gtk-qt-engine and Gaim will use your KDE theme and fit right it.

Unfortunately, a theme engine that imitates widget appearance does not automatically result in desktop integration. In fact, having applications that appear on the surface to be similar, but actually behave differently, have different menu structures etc. is even more confusing for users (myself included) than applications that share no visual features.

As for using Windows as a benchmark for consistency, I think you're aiming rather low. Try applications on OSX (excluding Apple's recent Finder & Mail abominations) and you'll appreciate the value of consistency & integration.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[dr.badass]

if the community keeps splitting up, Linux will never pose a real threat to Windows in the desktop world.

The trouble with this kind of assessment is that not everyone in "the community" cares if Linux poses a threat to Windows. They just want to build what they think is great software.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[Anonymous Coward]

I spend some of my free time working on GNOME (obligatory link). I don't like KDE at all. Thus, I don't work on KDE. Even if I _did_ like KDE, I would refuse to work on a desktop environment based on a GPL/dual license toolkit. I like my freedom as in free and freedom as in beer. If I wanted to make proprietary software on GNOME without getting nailed by Trolltech, I can. There's no such freedom on KDE.

I'm not bugged by it, and I don't see a problem.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[JebusIsLord]

If you want to charge for your QT-based software, you have to pay for a QT license. If you want to release free QT software you don't have to pay for anything. Sounds totally fair to me... you want something for nothing?

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[wemgadge]

use http://freshmeat.net/projects/gtkthemeswitch/ GTK theme switch to use your GTK themes from your Gnome install in KDE. I am using it to make a consistent "MacOSx" desktop across Gnome (using AquaExtremeSunken theme) and KDE (using Baghira) http://matthewfogel.blogspot.com/2005_05_08_matthe wfogel_archive.html

Sure, it may not improve usability in itself, but having a consistent interface (say selecting Plastik in both Qt/KDE apps and GTKx) sure is pretty.

Wemmy

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[Clansman]

You seem to be arguing that real 'granular' choice will never really exist in our bi-polar DE world. If you choose KDE you will have to use Kopete and if you find Kopete unsatisfactory, the right thing is to help improve Kopete.

This is distinctly different from Windows where, having chosen my DE (lets just call it that) I then have a *very* wide range of apps to choose from all fitting in well with the look and feel (etc) of the enviroment.

Maybe I interpreted you wrong ...

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[Rahga]

If you want to charge for your QT-based software, you have to pay for a QT license. If you want to release free QT software you don't have to pay for anything. Sounds totally fair to me... you want something for nothing?

Yes... In fact, I can get that with Gtk+.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[molnarcs]

No, your interpretation is right ... more or less. There are some instances where there is a single application that blends in nicely (fitting in well with the look and feel) of the environment - kopete is one of those instances. It is also a pretty good IM, so I feel that there is little or few reasons one might be clamoring for alternatives. In other instances, there are multiple applications performing the same function, the same way as there are multiple apps for certain tasks in Windows. Music players (Juk, Amarok, Noautun, etc.), office tools (oo.o 2.0 will have a native look on kde, so you can choose b/w it and koffice), movie players (kaffeine, kplayer, KMplayer), ftp clients just to name a few.

So the range of applications is perhaps not as wide as in windows (but then, when it comes to quality, there is hardly any good and free alternative to nero that matches the quality of k3b), but then you'll have users complaining that there is too much choice ;) I can see their point too, even though too much choice never really bothered me in KDE: instead of having to choose between one or two really good quality progs, the user must spend a lot of time finding the app that suits his or her needs. This can get really counterproductive - I went through this experience when I was fishing for a good CMS on opensourcecms.org - and I saw comments implying that many users spent considerable time trying to find the right one, for there are hundreds of open source CMS out there (I saw someone who tried out 17!). The problem is that most of them are mediocre and they are not that different from each other, so in this instance, having fewer but better quality CMS systems would be better.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[arendjr]

Your average PC user doesn't want to have to deal with a different look-and-feel every time he boots an application, so he'll be stuck with the apps that were developed for his desktop environment. And of course we all know how many users bail out when they see the hugely inconsistent interfaces of MS Office, Windows Media Player and MSN Messenger...

My wish for KDE apps

[bogaboga]

My wish for KDE applications, in addition to supporting all that the usability guys are doing, is to be able to re-order all icons on the menu bar. It is some what possible now, but in many cases, you fire-up your application and find that the menu bar is disorganized! Re-ordering at this moment becomes impossible! After restarting the app, re-ordering may be possible.

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.

Re:My wish for KDE apps

[JohnFluxx]

File specific bugs (the toolbar should be arrange like this) and it will most likely be done.

File at bugs.kde.org

/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[vlad_petric]

Usability (intuitiveness and "just works"-ness) is precisely what's keeping Linux from being adopted by the masses.

This is one of the best news I've heard in years.

Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

You're not toe-ing the party line here!

You really mean:

"Microsoft's monopoly power/software patents/SCO/Darl/Anti-open source zealots are precisely what's keeping Linux from being adopted by the masses." ;)

Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[Stevyn]

and before people say "but windows sucks too!", linux and the desktop environment have to be a LOT better to win people over.

kioslaves is a major improvement. I plug a drive in, and an icon appears on the desktop. A thing I noticed randomly was if I scroll over the JuK tray icon, it skips to the next song. If I scroll over the speaker tray icon, the volume increases or decreases. When you go to rename a file, it highlights the name but not the extension because you rarely change the extension of a file. These of course are little things, but they do make a difference. There are also countless usability improvements that I can't think of right now.

KDE has come along way since the days of 1.0 and I'm sure the pace is going to increase as more people get involved.

So yeah, KDE is improving and at this pace, it may be a LOT better than windows. Of course that's before longhorn comes out and I'm sure a bunch of people are trying to get linux adoption up before that hype takes over.

Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[imr]

Usability is also what helped a lot the gnome project.
Compare the different growth they had in user market share while KDE wasnt helped by usability experts and gnome was.
Oh! Wait ....

Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[mjsottile77]

I have to agree - as a long time Linux user who left the platform for one that actually spends a great deal of effort on usability, I think it's progress to see the Linux GUI being criticized. My personal opinion is that KDE is far more consistent than GNOME -- license issues aside, the KDE environment felt better. Of course, this is simply an opinion.

The unfortunate pattern that seems to pervade the OSS GUI world is that less attention (sometimes none) is paid to giving users a uniform experience across apps, and more attention is given to simply providing cloned functionality of non-OSS programs. It seems to be of little value if I can get an OSS version of a Windows or Mac app, yet find myself in an interface that is subtly (or sometimes, drastically) different than every other application I use.

I will gladly run back to Linux and OSS GUIs when they catch up with the alternatives in terms of the user experience -- functionality is one thing, but usability is another. And it's definitely a key to retention and acceptance. Minimize the learning curve folks!

Of course, there is a definite line between decisions made for engineering reasons (ie, user interface standards and practices) and religious reasons (free vs. not). Opting towards good engineering and design would be a step in the right direction.

Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[neves]

Just a little tip: if you really want to see an inprovement, change juk for amarok. Nowadays its not just my favorite music player, but my favorite open source application.

Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[Stevyn]

Yeah every post that mentions JuK has somebody saying amarok is better. I've used both and I prefer juk for it's simplicity and overall feel. Nothing other than opinion really. However, since both are qt apps, they both look nice.

Congrats

[molnarcs]

Hmmm... that's very nice. KDE can learn a lot from the pitfalls GNOME went through in their quest for usability. I'm thinking of the failure to provide facilities to establish communications between developers, users, and usability experts. This was one of the gripes of Eugenia not so long ago (and as much as I hate to admit it, she was right!). It seemed to me that the main problem was that usability changes was decided by fiat - spatial browsing as the default, reverse button order, and a few years ago, the file selector - there was and still is a sense that some of these are 'forced' down the users throat by developers who like to cite their HIG (yet they violate it in the next turn by frustrating user-expectations). Anyway, the sign that KDE is heading towards the right direction is the effort they put into providing a framework with the purpose of faciliating communication between users, experts and developers. What I have in mind is the bugzilla equivalent for usability suggestions/comments that the article mentions.

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!

KDE Print

[bogaboga]

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?

Re:KDE Print

[rainman_bc]

lol I find EVERYTHING in KDE has too many damn buttons... That's JMO... It's that whole "Less is more" vs "more and more"... I'm not fond of it... others have a much different take...

Re:KDE Print

[Darth_Burrito]

I'm not a usability expert, but looking at the basic print dialogue, I see a number of things that could be done differently. Ok, there's three main control areas on the page. The top one is labelled "Printer", the middle section can have different contents depending on which tab you are in, and the bottom area consists mostly of buttons.

In the top area, there is a preview checkbox. Presumably this means print preview. But why is it in the printer control group? Is it previewing the printer? Why is it a checkbox? Presumably when it is checked, it changes the functionality of the "Print" button to "Print Preview". Wouldn't it be more sensible to have a "Print Preview" button instead?

In the form, there are multiple greyed out options and blank fields. Why is the type of the printer blank? Why is the location blank? What do I have to do to enable the output file control? Why can I specify to print all, print a range of pages, but not print the current page.

Grouping could also be improved. Why not put the "Print System currently used" under the "System Options" button? Why are the copies, html settings and advanced options all treated as tabs while the System Options is separated as a button? If the tabs are document options while the System Options are more global, then this could be made more obvious. For that matter, why exactly is HTML Settings a category of printing options.

Terminology can also be improved. What does collapse do? What do the funnel and magic wand icons next to the printer drop down signify? What information is supposed to be conveyed by the "Comment"? How is "Advanced Options" different from "System Options"?

Re:KDE Print

[vegaspctech]

Seriously, I totally agree with you. I think kprinter actually is a very good example of the problems kde faces. Kprinter is technically an awsome tool if you take the time to really get into it. However the problem is, for simply setting up a local printer it is way to confusing.

No, but your post is a very good example of the problems KDE, Gnome and the rest face, when it comes to adoption by Windows users. If something has a configuration option or two less than Windows does for the same thing, then it's not configurable enough. If it's got a configuration option or two more than Windows does, it's too confusing. I just pulled up the default Windows and vendor provided printer configuration panels on Windows 2k, XP and 98 SE and printer properties in Kprinter for KDE 3.4. Kprinter appears to have just a couple more options than the default Windows equivalent and a couple less than the configuration tools provided by Epson and Canon. The most significant difference I see is a matter of depth. In Kprinter and the Epson tool all the options appear to be presented at the same depth, a handful of tabbed pages in one window, while the Windows and Canon tools have buttons on some pages that open additional windows. The latter have most the same options as the former, they just hide more of them.

Re:KDE Print

[zpok]

"The most significant difference I see is a matter of depth. In Kprinter and the Epson tool all the options appear to be presented at the same depth, a handful of tabbed pages in one window, while the Windows and Canon tools have buttons on some pages that open additional windows. The latter have most the same options as the former, they just hide more of them."

Your comment reminds me of an anecdote from a usability conference, where the GUI guy met with the programmer who said "look, here, I made it extra useable, all 45 options on one big screen, good hey? Very difficult to get them to fit together, had to make them a bit smaller".

If you don't see what's wrong with that picture, you may belong to the minority of people who actually can handle huge sets of data represented on one big screen. The rest of us can't.

Imagine someone like me in an air-traffic control center...

Hiding options, controversially, enhances usability - if done right of course, that goes without saying.

Getting the blend right between screens with the essential quick and dirty setup options, and the right options "hidden" behind logical "option-widgets" (for instance opening well laid out windows, tabs, drawers, sheets, whatever...) makes an app useable.

Of course, there's always the annoyance when something is done different from what you're used to, but good GUI's translate across platforms.

And I think the complaints about Kprinter are not of the "OS X/XP is better because that's what I'm used to" variety. That doesn't mean it's a bad app in every sense, it means it's more bewildering than most.

In the end, you don't set up your printer every day - I think I've never consciously set up a printer since OS X, but that's another thing, making interaction with apps redundant ;-)

Re:KDE Print

[nutshell42]

no, the basic print dialog looks like this

You show the already expanded version. (And afaik it's not KDE 3.4 either. Seems like the screens are outdated)

Most of your "problems" sounds like minor nitpicking of someone desperate to find faults or someone who has never even used the program but finds that he can't figure out a complex tool (ais, it's the advanced dialog and the printing subsystem is complex on all systems) by just looking at a screenshot. The one problem you mentioned that I can agree with is that "Range" never seems to be grayed out, even if the option doesn't make any sense because there's only one page.

Re:KDE Print

[w9ofa]

Hiding options, controversially, enhances usability - if done right of course, that goes without saying.>

I think that this idea, while widely propogated, is false. You don't want to hide options, you want the configurator to have no options. The ultimate configurator will interact with its environment, figure out what the stuff out there is, and set itself up without user intervention.

While that is a pipe dream in many scenarios, it should be what all GUIs are striving for. Hiding options is merely a half-hearted attempt at this, and is an incomplete solution.

In some sense, the end-to-end principle applies here. The generic configuration program is not really generic at all, it is a collection of specific programs that solve specific configuration scenarios. The user needs to translate his particular scenario into a bunch of GUI button presses, and if they are hidden in order to make life easier "for most people", then he has actually been harmed. You can't solve a specific problem genericly in principle, because the information you need to solve it is by definition not known until a specific situation is encountered.

Re:KDE Print

[zpok]

"I think that this idea, while widely propogated, is false."

Well yes, I agree, but only on a very broad basis: if you go from our primitive printer scenario all the way forward to being able to just tell your computer what you want and let the poor beast sort it out for himself. Have that sucker deal with its own programming and us just going "I don't care if it's complicated, print that paper now!" That would be very cool indeed.

But meanwhile we're stuck with a mouse and a keyboard on one side and the magic box on the other, only some stupid buttons and command line between the two... so yes, hiding options in a logical way (logical meaning a lot of things in this context) is the best we can do for now.

Unless we're talking about one trick ponies, but even my digital camera would have more than 50 buttons if some kind soul wouldn't have applied the 80/20 rule. The fact that he did it with good insight makes it a good, simple, fast camera, at least for me.

So, even most of our appliances aren't clever enough yet to not have to hide some options. Hell, even the iPod has options ;-)

I hope I read you right? Note that I don't try to describe a magical formula that works every time, and I do agree with you that all GUI's should strive to make itself redundant. I really admire the iApps Apple built, that go a long way in doing just that, but while I use some of them to their limits, they're hardly professional.
The only programs that really go as far as you describe are the things running in the background doing I don't know what, probably very useful things that thankfully I don't have to bother with...

Re:KDE Print

[w9ofa]

probably very useful things that thankfully I don't have to bother with...


Hehe, that's my ideal.

I agree, it's pie-in-the-sky, and largely dependent on the hardware manufacturers themselves doing due diligence to make their products easy to configure and use.

Such is life.

Re:kde tooltips - got to go

[zbik]

maybe they will get rid of those huge tooltips when you mouse over the links on the panel

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?

KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design

[Princess Tarja]

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!

Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design

[HillaryWBush]

but after hearing so much about how crappy the win interface is what do we get in kde, same old thing.

Let's think about "them" (the OSS programmers) for a second. Obviously, they're copying Windows. Obviously they are NOT producing consumer products for sale. And obviously they are NOT trying to somehow jump past Windows into the new paradigm.

I would say that they're doing something quite different and interesting: they're purging Windows from their souls. Like when a veteran visits Io Jima. To sum up, it's a labor of love, not of your approval!

Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design

[friedmud]

Are you kidding?

What are you comparing it to? I have worked on a lot of large object oriented code bases (my day job is maintaining a LARGE finite-element code written in C++) and working in KDE is atleast an order of magnitude better than any large piece of code I can think of.

There are very well laid out docs that describe the core pieces of the system and tie it all together with the Qt heritage. The inheritance trees is KDE are very good... with just the right amount of inherit and extend mixed in with a good amount of functionality (some codes go too far down the OO paradigm path while others don't go far enough).

If you're not comparing it to other object oriented code bases then you are probably comparing it to Gnome... which, quite frankly, would be hilarious. Gnome is a HUGE mess (architecturally) compared to KDE. To do anything you have to use a huge kludge of disparate libraries that never follow the same design patterns (because they are external to Gnome). Most of the time you end up implementing your own widgets because the standard base isn't expressive enough (one of the reasons why toolbars look different in a lot of Gnome apps)... and in general it is just really tough to get anything done.

As for no-one ever cleaning up anything... that is just rediculous. KDE has gone through SEVERAL large cleanups... including a fairly recent one which switched everything over to stricter namespaces (to prevent collisions).

I am not saying that KDE is in any way simple... but there's no way it could be with all it does. It is a LOT of code, but I feel that they manage it better than most.

Friedmud

Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design

[jayloden]

to paraphrase:

"...sure xfce4 "seems" more consistent & integrated than kde but personally it seems like nothing but a Mac OS X ui hack, looks just like it dont it? I'm all for choice but after hearing so much about how crappy the Mac interface is what do we get in xfce4, same old thing. I use kde exclusively and will never change..."

- just pointing out what has to be said: there's only so many ways to go in UI without a radical redesign of the computing world in general, and either you're going to look to someone like you're copying Windows, or copying Mac OS, or copying BeOS, or copying an Amiga. I like KDE, and I like xfce4, but let's face it, they BOTH have a lot in common with what's come before, but so what? Sure, fine, you can argue KDE is a lot like Windows, but you know what? I'll take my KDE over Windows any day of the week, and the more they improve, the happier I'll be.

-Jay

Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design

[Reziac]

I haven't looked at KDE in a while, but when I've messed with linux, KDE has been my preferred desktop. Anyway... last time around, I tweaked this and twiddled that until everything worked nicely, and was rather amused to realize that my "most usable" KDE configuration looked and behaved almost exactly like Win95. This certainly wasn't intentional on my part (I'm an old DOS-head, and my WinBoxen don't look much alike, so why would I expect an unrelated OS/desktop to look or act like Windows?) but did go to demonstrate that "usability" tends to have consistent fundamentals no matter where you're at.

Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design

[10Ghz]

How exactly is KDE a "Windows UI hack"? Please provide some examples. It has a taskbar? Gnome has that as well. "Start"-menu? Again: Gnome has that as well. It has windows? All GUI's have that. So why is KDE a "Windows UI hack", whereas Gnome (for example) is not?

What you seem to be thinking is that KDE should be different from Windows for the sole reason of being different. If it has some similarities to the way Windows works (all GUI's look more or less similar), it's automatically a bad thing. You don't mention any technical- or usability-reason why Windows is bad, you just think Windows == Bad. Anything that looks vaguely like Windows == Bad. And you fail to mention whether those flaws are still present in KDE. Your point just seems to be "OMG! Windows has [feature X]. And since KDE has [Feature X] as well, it sucks!". Well, Windows has windows, and xfce has windows as well. Clearly xfce sucks!

Yes, there are some similarities between Windows and KDE. There are also similarities between Gnome and KDE. And there are differences between each of them.

I use xfce4 exclusively and will never change.

Good for you! I tested xfce and I wasn't that exited about it. But it's a good thing that you like it. Choice is a good thing, no?

Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design

[lav-chan]

If KDE really was that close to Windows, it probably wouldn't look so ridiculously ugly.

Re:kde tooltips - got to go

[vegaspctech]

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.

Re:kde tooltips - got to go

[Karzz1]

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.

First hand account...

[Che Guevarra]

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.

Re:First hand account...

[Narchie Troll]

You'll find that most people who are doing programming work for free don't give a flying fuck about 'consumer behavior.'

Re:First hand account...

[Moofie]

IFF they want consumers to use and appreciate their work, they need to.

Not saying they should or they shouldn't: But that attitude is why the usability on Linux is so bad.

Re:First hand account...

[Narchie Troll]

The usability on Linux isn't bad. I make great use of it every day. I have everything I need to do mapped to keyboard shortcuts.

This is because I am using a window manager (ion) and applications (vim, mutt, naim) which were not designed with 'consumer behavior' in mind. They were designed to the personal preferences of their designers, and I happily share those preferences.

If Linux somehow started emulating Windows or, worse, Mac OS X, I'd very quickly switch to something else. I'd pay good money to see FreeBSD given software suspend support to get away from that.

Re:First hand account...

[Moofie]

Yeah, that Linux, sure glad they invented keyboard shortcuts. Sure wish there were other operating systems that could do things when you push buttons on the keyboard. Never heard of such a thing...

My objection to Linux is its total lack of consistency. If a button does one thing in one window, it should do the same thing in a different window.

That just isn't there. Maybe it will be, maybe it won't.

I'm glad you like your Linux system. Please don't write anything for my Powerbook.

Re:First hand account...

[Reziac]

It doesn't even have to be standardized from one desktop to the next, other than for the basics. It only has to be standardized within a given desktop, so once the user becomes accustomed *to that desktop*, they don't get any rude behavioural surprises.

Sortof like how I don't expect Win3.1 and Win9* to behave alike, other than in the most broadly used functions (like copy and paste, ALT-F4 to close apps, etc). But I do expect the desktop and apps *within each OS* to behave consistently, so I'm not unexpectedly confronted with oddball stuff like menus that wander around the screen and right-click being used to close the current window.

I'm reminded that one of the things many users *disliked* about many DOS apps, and Win3.0 apps, was that no two of them behaved alike, so what was learned in one app couldn't be applied across the board. This made reaching a usability comfort zone needlessly difficult.

Re:First hand account...

[the_womble]

Really? then why are they spending so much time on usability? What about OSS developers who do not work for free? If that attitude was really as prevalant as you claim no one other than a few geeks would use OSS and Linux would be about as widely used as BSD on the desktop. (Yes I know BSD is widely used on serves but thats a different market).

Re:First hand account...

[Narchie Troll]

I'm trying to see what possessed you to make such an utterly ludicrous strawman argument, but I don't think I can stoop that low.

I was explaining why and how my computer works for me in a way that is different than the way your computer works for you. That includes certain keyboard shortcuts. It could also include big black dildos smacking me in the face. That doesn't make a statement about whether other systems include keyboard shortcuts or big black dildos.

I'm not an idiot. Don't treat me like one. In the end, my sentiment is the same as yours -- what works for me works for me. Don't force what works for you on me.

The difference is that you're a smartass, and I'm just an asshole.

Re:First hand account...

[Narchie Troll]

1. Usability does not equal 'consumer behavior'. The majority of computer users need plastic drool covers on their keyboards, and the way they should use computers should involve a steel cage and semaphore flags.
2. The percentage of total free software developers that work on graphical environments is not particularly high.
3. The percentage of those developers who concentrate on usability is, again, low (regrettably).
4. The small percentage of total free software developers who actually do make usability by others a focus are to a large extent paid for that work, by Red Hat, IBM, and the like.
5. Linux is about as widely used as BSD on the desktop -- barely. Don't delude yourself into believing there's this massive revolution of Tuxes bursting across the PC universe.
6. Most usability work is not done for Linux but instead for X. That work transfers handily over to BSD, so the point is pretty dumb anyway.
7. Lists should have an odd number of points, so your mother was a whore and your father was a syphilitic dwarf.

The real problem lies here

[Che Guevarra]

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.

Re:The real problem lies here

[Makarakalax]

I understand your perspective, but crikey, I've used all the major operating systems and none of them standardise.

And take a course in diplomacy dick, being offensive made me think you must have a small prick.

What I don't get is that every moron has a different and unstructured opinion on what we must do to make Linux more succesful. Frankly I have no interest in making some grand unified experience for morons. I find it pretty interesting to see how different products innovate. My girlfriend can use Mac OSX, which I also love, that's the most consistent OS I've used.

Look, sorry for being rude. I just get worked up by this shit. You act like we're all a bunch of shit because we don't do this easy thing but the reality is you don't know shit about it and words are easy to type into this input box. Give it some thought next time or I'll just flame you again.

Bugs, bugs, bugs

[DogDude]

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.

Re:Bugs, bugs, bugs

[teknomage1]

Despite what business schools are saying, programmers are not homogenous units with various language options. Different developers work on different aspects of the system according to their strengths especially when they are working for free. And just because some are working on usability, doesn't mean many aren't working on bug fixes or new features.

Re:Bugs, bugs, bugs

[zpok]

Don't agree. Switch usability and bugs. The whole point of building a useable app is to put usability in from the start and then take out the bugs. Putting bugs first won't get you a better app in the long run.
Apple is a good example, their point releases fix the bugs but the apps are useable from day one.
To get there, the priority list should be:
1. Usability
2. Testing
3. Bug fixing
4. New features

Re:kde tooltips - got to go

[ashridah]

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

Re:kde tooltips - got to go

[vegaspctech]

Oops. My bad. I was sitting at 3.3 at the time. Yeah, what he said. ;-)

Gnome has better apps

[alucinor]

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!

Re:Gnome has better apps

[Ziviyr]

I have gathered KDE makes things REALLY EASY to do.

From my Amiga experience, MUI made things really easy, and those apps tended to crash and have basic logic flaws.

I think it really is just a matter of "you must be this tall to use this toolkit ----", and if the average height is higher, the average app will reflect that.

No offense KDE team, but the Konqueror icon drag race conditions are getting to be annoying.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[Spicerun]

"Why do developers choose to write these great apps with GTK instead of QT?"

Actually, I'll reproduce a portion of this article from http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/wiki.pl?WxWidgets_Compar ed_To_Other_Toolkits

It certainly captures why I use WxGTK over Qt.

wxWidgets compared to Qt

* Both Qt (http://www.trolltech.com/) and wxWidgets have many non-GUI-related classes, such as date/time, containers, networking and OpenGL functionality. However, if you are developing commercial applications (non-gpl) in Qt and want to use most of these classes (including the OpenGL widget), you have to pay extra for the "enterprise edition" (http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/editions.htm l) on top of the normal commercial version of Qt (the "professional edition").

* Qt2 is available under the GPL for open-source applications, and under the QPL for commercial applications. Qt3 for Mac and GNU/Linux is similarly dual-licensed, but there is no free version of Qt3 for Windows. All ports of wxWidgets are distributed under a permissive modified (but explicitly OSI-approved) LGPL.
o Trolltech has announced that Qt4 will be available under the GPL on Windows. See http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/announcements/00 000192.html.

* Qt doesn't have true native ports such as wxWidgets ([with the exception of Qt/Mac].) Qt draws its own widgets on each platform instead of using the native widgets, whereas wxWidgets offers true native ports for all the supported platforms. Additionally, an approach similar to Qt's is achieved with wxUniversal (of course it should be noted that on some platforms, Qt _is_ the native GUI library.)

* Qt programs are not true C++ programs and require a special pre-compiler, the so-called Meta Object Compiler or moc. wxWidgets programs do not require this kind of preprocessing and are true C++ programs.

* Qt is used by several large projects like KDE and the Opera browser (on the other hand, wxWidgets is used by projects like the AOL Communicator)

* Qt makes extremely liberal use of virtual functions (QTWidget, the base class of all widgets in Qt had 91 at last count), giving it a more OO design than wxWidgets (which uses a more MFC-like approach using macros). What this means is fewer lines of code in general when using Qt, but faster execution speed when using wxWidgets (although the degree to which this occurs depends on whom you ask).

Re:Gnome has better apps

[Kesha]

Qt programs are absolutely true C++ programs. If you don't want to use moc, you can write by hand all of the code that moc would generate for you.

Paul.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[Rahga]

You mentioned the games on GNOME, something I know a little about... ;)

My problem with the Qt toolkit is about TrollTech and their dual license. The GNOME platform is far more free as beer and freedom goes. KDE is restricted to either GPL applications or TrollTech licensed applications, and quite honestly, I see no reason to give TrollTech that type of control over the platform I would chose to work on...

Fortunately, I don't even like the KDE desktop and platform in the first place, so this is a win-win in my case. :)

Re:Gnome has better apps

[cozziewozzie]

OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird can all run using Qt. None of them was natively a GTK application, they are as much GTK as they are Qt.

Gaim and Evolution have very good counterparts at Kopete and Kontact.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Eclipse a Java application?

Re:Gnome has better apps

[10Ghz]

So what's wrong with GPL? Seriously? And you are NOT limited to either the GPL or "TT licensed applications". You are completely free to buy a commercial license of Qt and license your apps in any way you wish! I mean, if you are planning to write commercial apps, then surely you can afford the license? If you can't afford it, may I suggest a alternative career? If you can't make enough money from your apps in order to pay for quality set of tools, then I think you are in the wrong line of business.

In short: If you use Qt, you can use GPL or QPL by default. If you want to use another license, you can buy Qt, and license your apps any way you want to.

Fortunately, I don't even like the KDE desktop and platform in the first place, so this is a win-win in my case. :)

In other words: "I just used the opportunity to whine about a non-issue. And even if they fixed the problem I have with their toolkit, I still wouldn't use it!". So why whine about Qt/TT then? Obviously they are a complete non-issue to you, so why does it matter to you how they license their toolkit? Or did you just use this as an opportunity to mention "oh, BTW, I hate Qt and KDE"? Well, thanks for your insight!

Re:Gnome has better apps

[10Ghz]

I have the exact opposite feeling. For years people thought that KDE had the better desktop, while Gnome had the better apps. But it seems to me that over the past few years KDE has really catched up as far as apps are concerned.

Before, everyone used XMMS for their music. Then we got Juk and Amarok, both kick-ass apps. Gnome had Evolution for their PIM, while KDE has nothing. Then we got Kontact. CD-Burning? K3B, the best app of it's kind on Linux. Editors? Kate. Konqueror got really good really fast. There's still GIMP, but KDE-folks are working on an alternative, and it shows alot of promise. GAIM used to be the best IM there is. Then we got Kopete. The list goes on and on.

You you seem to make the classic error on your post. Firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird and Eclipse etc. are in no shape or form tied to GTK or Gnome. You can use them on KDE just fine.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[Rahga]

"If you can't make enough money from your apps in order to pay for quality set of tools, then I think you are in the wrong line of business."

How about this.... If you force people to pay money to make software based on what is touted as a free software platform, you are in the wrong line of culture.

"Why whine about Qt/TT?"

Because the grandparent asked for my point of view, and because there's way too many irrational KDE cheerleaders on Slashdot that take every oppritunity to protect their platform and Trolltech.

"Well, thanks for your insight!"

You're welcome.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[teknomage1]

Gnome is GPl'd, you are restricted to the GPL for gnome applications as well.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[10Ghz]

How about this.... If you force people to pay money to make software based on what is touted as a free software platform, you are in the wrong line of culture.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but.... That's the way it works in just about ALL GPL-based software! You can't take GPL'ed software and start selling it in a way Microsoft does for example. And last time I checked, most software on Linux seems to be GPL'ed.

Of course you are free to do as you please. Feel free to NOT use Qt (as you have done). No-one forces you to use it. But I find it rather weird that you whine how Qt pushes it's license on you. Well, that's the way GPL works! If you don't like it, don't use it. If you feel like whining about it, whine to RMS for coming up with such a crappy license! I mean, surely everyone should have the right to profit from other people's work without giving anything back, right?

Because the grandparent asked for my point of view, and because there's way too many irrational KDE cheerleaders on Slashdot that take every oppritunity to protect their platform and Trolltech.

I don't get it. I just don't. First people whine when Qt is not 100% free software. Then they fix the problem by licensing it under the GPL. And now those people whine that they can't use Qt for free without being limited by GPL! So they want others to write free software for them, as long as they can write non-free software.

I wonder who is "irrational" here? People march around telling that others (in this case, TT) should write free software. And when those people are told to write free software in return, they bitch and moan about it.

"Do as I say! Not as I do!". Just how hypocritical can people be?

Re:Gnome has better apps

[Rahga]

"I wonder who is "irrational" here?" ....
"Do as I say! Not as I do!". Just how hypocritical can people be?

Hypocrite? Geez... of all the words to pick.

Either you are stupid or forgetful. I don't care which. :)

Re:Gnome has better apps

[10Ghz]

If your games are licenced under the GPL (like most Linux-apps are), then what's the problem with Qt? You could use it just fine.

Yes, the word I used was "hypocritical". Reason being that people like you whined when Qt wasn't free software. And now you whine when they licensed it under the GPL, and that means that it requires you to license your code under the GPL as well. So you guys kept on insisting that Qt must be free software. But when Qt insists (through it's license) that your software must be free software as well, you bitch and moan! Yes, that is hypocrisy in my books! You demand that Trolltech does something, but when they tell you to do the EXACT SAME THING, you whine! What's the matter? Not prepared to eat the same dogfood you dish out?

of course, if you dislike GPL, then that's your problem. Unfortunately most softare on Linux is GPL'ed.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[Rahga]

Okay, since you explained why you used "hypocritical"....

The thing is, I'm not being a hypocrite. Though I've only got my name to one ChangeLog entry in Gtk+, I'm more than happy to see people use Gtk+ in non-free software. I want everyone to be able to use the toolkits and libraries I use and occassionally fix bugs on, not just the people who want to develop free software. RMS and GNU use the term "lesser" because of the non-viral freedom, but personally, I think it's far more free.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[Klivian]

>If you force people to pay money to make software based on what is touted as a free
>software platform, you are in the wrong line of culture.
You are rather clueless are you not, since you only make people who don't belong to the "culture" pay for making non free software. If you make free software it's free, if not you have to pay. And that's free as in freedom not gratis, as some clueless people like you think.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[pinky1]

>How about this.... If you force people to pay money to make software based on what is touted as a free software platform, you are in the wrong line of culture.

How about this... If you create software which denies freedom to their users on a free software platform, you are in the wrong line of culture.

Personally i prefer gnome/xfce as Desktop and use Gtk+ for my GUI apps.
But i think the license argument is just a alibi argument. Both toolkits are free software, that's what count on o free operating system, so talk about technical advantage. Gtk+ and Qt has so much to offer. So start talking about the advantage and disadvantage of both. But don't use that easy excuses like the licenses.

Re:Gnome has better apps

[10Ghz]

I'm more than happy to see people use Gtk+ in non-free software

And Qt is widely used in non-free software, so I fail to see the point. It merely encourages people to write GPL'ed software, and that is a good thing in my book.

Starting with Qt4, it will be GPL'ed in Windows as well, so it will encourage people to write ree software for Windows as well. Again: a good thing, IMO. But you CAN still ue it for commercial apps if you so desire. But you have to pay for Qt one way or the other: either through source or money. And I have no problems with that. Source benefits the community as a whole, whereas money gets funneled in to developement of Qt, and that too benefits the community.

IMHO KDE is superior compared to Windows except...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sloppy research

[Klivian]

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.

You're not far off it.

[donscarletti]

I'm not a usability expert

Maybe not, but give yourself a little credit, you're close. You already have a big mouth of cause, but don't we all when we get onto a forum. Your ability and willingness to disguise opinions as facts is also showing great promise, with a little work it could be up to professional standards. I also see in you the ability to make it seem that your personal opinions about different things is actually well thought out and objectively reasoned design rules, this is always an important talent to have. Where you fall short is of cause that you don't even attempt to mention is the ever elusive "end user" that cannot comprehend a save dialogue unless it has just three buttons but somehow has the desire to use even the most esoteric of technical applications. Your greatest and most obvious flaw is of cause your modesty, acknowledging that you don't know anything about usability is a poor way to start a usability rant, even the greatest usability experts know no more about their field than you do, but they have the skills to make sure this never gets in the way of effective user interface design. I would suggest that you use one of the following introductions in future: "Nobody understands the average user but me" or "Interfaces designed my me are intrinsically better than anything else" or even "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair".

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.

Re:Linux usability programmers?

[chill]

I still cannot see a single place that I can remove software that I install.

K menu --> System -- Package Manager

The task panel still not resizable using the mouse. And when you resize, the icons get larger (what good is that?)

Resizing the task bar is not something the average user does every day. Once in a great while is more like it. I have *never* tried to resize it with my mouse, simply because I never resize the taskbar. The taskbar in KDE has a dozen more customization options than in Windows, so use the Settings menu.

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 is a Filesystem Heirarchy Standard (FHS) that explains where all files on a compliant system belong. Not all software is 100% compliant, but then again it isn't on Windows, either. Check the Package Manager and it'll tell you where all the individual files are. Also, this isn't something that users should really concern themselves with. Let the system handle it.

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.

You're right, and this should never change! You forget this is *NIX and not Windows. When you highlight something like that, it is copying it to the clipboard. If I highlight a URL in a different document and want to paste it into the Firefox URL window, under your system I'm hosed because clicking in the window highlighted the existing URL and blew away my clipboard.

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.

Uh, in the file manager? Konqueror in KDE, places those as the first three buttons...

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.

It depends on what you do. Systems can be tweaked to boot in a few seconds in many cases, and RAM depends on the eye candy. Application startup time varies, and KDE 3.4 is the fasted KDE yet. AbiWord (non-KDE) loads in 4 seconds on my 750 MHz P3 (first time) and reloads in under 3.

-Charles

Re:Linux usability programmers?

[bindaaas]

To check where are files located do:
dpkg -L packagename
To uninstall everything that package installed on your systemd do:
apt-get remove --purge packagename
as far as click is concerned, you might wanna try Ctrl-L in firefox.
If you don't know, then that doesn't mean that system is stupid, but rather it is other way round..

cheers
bin
look siG is kool

I agree

[DJProtoss]

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.

Re:I agree

[Uncle_Al]

Sorry, but no.

How would people that have problems with vision set a High-Contrast color-scheme? Or do you want to have everyone use one so that some 5% of all people cann see better?

How would blind people interact with your perfect immersive environments, without telling the environment so? How would deaf people who cannot hear sound notification tell the environment that?

Sorry, while your comment is true in that config options are not a solution to most usability problems, the absolut you use is not quite true.

Re:I agree

[DJProtoss]

On the contrary. the need with monitors for having high contrast and dealing with deaf / blind people is part of the reason they can't be perfect. I probably didn't make myself clear by what I meant. By an immersive system, its probably going to have to be some form of direct brain link, although my point still stands. If a user has specific needs, the interface should be able to adapt to him without the need for reconfiguration. This is admittedly waay in advance of where we are now (the very first sign of this sort of thing can be seen in windows where if you hold a modifier key too long it offers to enable sticky keys, but comparing that to the goal is comparing a (hand) catapult to a cruise missile.

Re:I agree

[Uncle_Al]

>On the contrary. the need with monitors for having high contrast and dealing with deaf / blind people is part of the reason they can't be perfect.

I do not argue that monitors are perfect. This is just an example of a situation you will have for every kind of Interface.

>By an immersive system, its probably going to have to be some form of direct brain link

Well, what about some people having brain Interfaces with different Versions. Do you just want to talk to the people who have the most advanced Brain Interface? Do you want to talk to the lowest common denominator? Do you want to maybe talk to the highest Version you both share? This is a configuration option, though it can probably be decided automatically.

By the way...brain link?????????? Could we keep the timeframe in this century?

>If a user has specific needs, the interface should be able to adapt to him without the need for reconfiguration.

What is the ability to adapt other than some config option which is switched in result of some observation of the user?

And automatic switching might not be a good thing too. Remember Microsoft with those Changing Menus? Just some automatic adaptable Configuration - and not quite a good idea.

Or you mention the handling of Modifier keys in Windows. It's one of the most annoying things possible. What is the first thing I do when I accidently trigger this? Hit the "Do not do this again" Configuration option.

When you make decisions for the user you take from him the freedom to decide. I like to be able to make up my own mind, thank you.

The Thing is, a "perfect" UI, is about as realistic as a "perfect" society, a "perfect" human or the "perfect" apartement.

It pays off

[MemoryDragon]

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.

Actuall, Qt IS superior

[ardor]

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.

The last people

[el_womble]

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.

Re:The last people

[zpok]

Tip for gui developers:
Buy/steal a mac (refurb, mini, ebay) and download the free developer tools at the Apple developers website.

Now download the Human Interface Guidelines from Apple (as a reference, not a Bible).

And start building an interface with Interface Builder. It's the fastest prototyper around, barring paper and pencil (also a Great Idea, paper and pencil will help you out every time...)

You can make use of screenshots and HTML if you want to make a cross platform prototype.

Not that you'll be using Apple widgets in the final product, but you'll end up with a clear interface that you can use to discuss with developers, who can use the final version as a reference.

Also, having a GUI that's clutter-free and nicely lined out will give a good comparison to the thing that then will be built.

Re:The last people

[Makarakalax]

Talk for yourself, my interfaces rock.

usability - ok, but with care

[l3v1]

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.

Re:Linux usability programmers?

[Tadu]

If I highlight a URL in a different document and want to paste it into the Firefox URL window, under your system I'm hosed because clicking in the window highlighted the existing URL and blew away my clipboard.

Nitpick: selecting something under *nix will put the data into the selection buffer, not the clipboard. The clipboard even works the same under W32 and *nix, but W32 doesn't have a selection buffer.

Thus, it makes sense for W32 to select the text upon mouse click (though I still can't stand it), while it makes sense for *nix to not kill the selection buffer (and have a "=>" button to clear the URL bar with the mouse easily).

Re:Linux usability programmers?

[Shotgun]

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.

You're right, and this should never change! You forget this is *NIX and not Windows. When you highlight something like that, it is copying it to the clipboard. If I highlight a URL in a different document and want to paste it into the Firefox URL window, under your system I'm hosed because clicking in the window highlighted the existing URL and blew away my clipboard.

I totally agree. Kate does this, and is the one thing I hate about the editor. If you pull up the find dialog or replace dialog, it pulls the word containing the cursor into the dialog and highlights it. Forget that the word you wanted to find was first highlighted in another file. That is gone from you clipboard. You first have to delete what Kate put in the dialog box, RE-highlight the text in the other window, and then paste it. A royal PIA.