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OpenUsability and KDE: Cooperating on KPDF
sultanoslack writes "More from the world of usability in KDE -- there's an interview up where Albert Astals Cid, the KPDF maintainer, and Florian Grässle, a usability engineer from OpenUsability on working together to make KPDF more usable and some of the challenges in working together in a developer / usability engineer team. We've been seeing more from the OpenUsability folks lately, and they'll also be present doing a talk and staffing a booth this week at LinuxTag, Europe's largest Open Source conference." This interview-with-screenshots provides a neat look at the interaction of usability concerns and software development.
I certainly welcome this development. Usability is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind with a lot of open source software. This is an area that proprietary software companies still have an edge on because they're also in a position to pay for the extra work going into interface design.
Basically there are several aspects a good interface should fulfill -- like preventing errors before they happen and the user has to deal with them or giving the user control and freedom over the application (and not vice versa), offering an efficient interface and so on.
I'm not sure how errors can be prevented, assuming that they're not within control of the application. Does he mean design errors? Can someone explain?
see a Text Widget
Glad to see usability of open source software coming to fore front of the development. This is vital in terms of winning the heart and sould (and mind?) of regular everyday Joe users.
The other day I downloaded Fedora Core 4 DVD to try it out.
Usability problems already began right at the installer. Below is some things I noticed that should probably have been fixed long time ago:
1) I noticed the installer was using gnome-themed Yes/No dialog boxes when it wanted to ask questions. The problem is, half of those dialogs used GTK2's Yes/No buttons (red/green circle) and the other half used GNOME's yes/no buttons - green enter symbol and a red X. This is very inconsistent and confusing to the user.
2) At a number of times, default option in a Yes/No dialog was not the "cancel" one but one which would make irreversible changes. This is not good - what if someone accidentally presses "enter" on a dialog like this?
3) Keyboard navigation, while present had several bugs. At one point, installer asked for a root password, and when I entered a "weak" password, it popped up a warning dialog about this. The problem is, after I dismissed the dialog (with a esc key), keyboard focus was no longer on the installer! (or anythign else for that matter, no amount of alt-tabbing or pressing tab would get the focus back on the installer. If someone without a mouse was running this, at this point they have no other choice but to abort the install and start from beginning.
There was some other issues, but these are all I can remember off hand, and remember, this is just in the OS installer (GUI) itself! I can't imagine how much worse it gets once the system is installed and gets used. So, to make a long story short, any kind of cooperation to take usability one step higher is certainly welcome. Unfortunately this is only for a single KDE app, which isnt really unique in its function, but any change is better than nothing.
And not only for PDF files. Just put a transparent layer on top of every page and let the user write his comments on it, make some sketches etc. and save it along with the commented file to some other person, eg. the author...
It's assumed that the default settings are for newcomers, guests, and casual users. These users usually want to read the entire thread, not just the latest comments (you can figure out why yourself). Try reading an entire thread, with messages that may be longer than one screen, in sequence, when it's displayed in reverse order. You'll see what I mean.
For frequent users, it's assumed that they will setup an account, login, and set their
preference to suit their own reading style.
Note: this is for threads and order of messages in threads. Not for forums and order of threads in forums, or blogs and order of articles in blogs, etc. E.g., in Slashdot, the front page articles are listed in reverse order, but the comments are listed in chronological order (by default).
Anyone who calls themselves some sort of "usability-expert" even if they state they are only partially trained, and doesn't think about things like this, should consider another field.
Take your arrogant, ignorant statements and shove them up your ass.
I have made several attempts to switch to Linux completely, but still find myself going back to windoze simply for usability. Take the process for downloading/installing new software - it's just a complete pain! I have tried a few different distributions hoping to find one that provides an intuitive way to do that. I'm not particular fan of .exe, but it does provide a simply way for the end-user to accomplish the task.
If the Linux community really wants to get mere mortals to switch, make it so we can actually use it. As it is, Linux appears to be struggling with an identity crisis. Is it striving to be a viable alternative to Windows, or is it really just geekware? I want to make the switch, but the bottom line is that if I have such a difficult time accomplishing what should be a relatively simple task (and I'm a relatively experienced Windows user from DOS6.0), how is it that the Linux community expects to get Joe Sixpack on-board?
Actually so far it is not like that, all the usability has been done so far in a sane manner. The insanity of gnome is, that they applied usability for the most idiotic user and thus locking out one good power feature after the other.
KDE follows currently more the approach, make the common features more visible, change design weaknesses, but dont cut off the power user base (which is the core audience) by crippeling the programs. KPDF is the perfect example, it still has no feature lost, and so far is currently the best PDF reader, no matter which OS, there is currently no better one in existence. That is what I would call applied usability in a sane way.
Gnome on the other hand, has lost many users, with its we dumb everything down for the idiots approach, because most of its users were not idiots, but they feel sort of locked in and crippled in their usage.
Yes usability is very important and undervalued, but it's quite rediculous to see Windows as the shining light in this respect.
:)
I always say two words: Windows Mixer. Here's a (I suppose) utility that's meant to be used a lot by any and all users. But since it's birth (win95 or maybe even 3.x) it's been totally incomprehensible and it hasn't changed at all. Ask a random person to turn the microphone playing down but the recording level up (for example to reduce echos while in a conferencing app). They'll get confused and most often are not able to carry out the task. The result is every soundcard maker throwing a mixer app of their own on their driver CD. All have different UIs of course.
Besides, where KDE/Gnome/OSX strives to have apps that look and act in a uniform way, on Windows I see the opposite trend. Media players having their own wacky UI that's completely out of cue with "normal" apps. TV viewers: Why the heck do their widgets have to be dark blue or something. It's not CDE, it's Windows.
And here's the twist: many windows users seem to actually LIKE those incompatible and weird GUIs that come with such apps! What a world