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!

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

[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

[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.

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.

[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.

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:K!!

[mattyrobinson69]

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

openperhaps openyou openmean openlike openbsd's openapps.

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?

[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?

[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.

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.

/.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.

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

[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.

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

[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

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.

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

[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: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: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

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.

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.