KOffice GUI Competition Winner

Boudewijn Rempt writes "The KOffice GUI Competition has been won by Martin Pfeiffer. His entry was chosen from eighteen submissions by the jury because of its innovative, ground-breaking approach to workflow and document handling. Many submitters broke away from the beaten path and explored wild and wonderful ideas. The results page also has all submitted entries available for review."

Comments

Check it out

[Life700MB]

It's a pity the real poor coverage KOffice gets in the web compared to OpenOffice, being a really cool suite with great programs. It deserves a lot of respect what are they doing.


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Re:Check it out

[vux984]

Its a pity KOffice only runs on *nixes (afaik).

OpenOffice runs on Windows and OS X.

Given most computers run on Windows, that translates to more coverage. You want to slingshot KOffice into the limelight with OO.org port it to Windows.

It would also help Mass., with its ODF migration.

Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage

[Carewolf]

Ofcourse it supports exporting to PDF; all KDE applications does. You just press print and use the PDF printer.

Importing .doc is however notiously difficult, and KWord only does so in limited ways.

The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces

[jackjansen]

The comments to this article (so far) IMHO show why Open Source user interfaces are in such a bad shape: 90% is about some minor functionality that this-or-that package doesn't have, 9% is about graphics design. Only one post discusses the reason this submission won the contest: it proposes an innovative way to present your daily work.

After 20+ years of research results that tell people what good user interface guidelines are, plus companies such as Apple that have products that more-or-less adhere to these guidelines, it seems that the open source community (I know, equating /. posters with the open source community is a bit of a stretch:-) still doesn't get the point. It is not about how many thousand things your application can do, it is not about beautiful screen layouts, it is about enabling the end user to complete the task they have set themselves with the minimal amount of hassle (especially if s/he has done a similar thing many times before), and helping them with that task as much as possible (especially if s/he is doing something for the first time).

Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces

[QuantumG]

This is a problem with the whole industry, not just Open Source.

Re:It's not shiney enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about pretty versus functional, it's about immediate satisfaction versus long-term gain.

The quality of a search engine is immediately apparent. You either find what you are looking for or you don't.

The productivity of an office suite isn't immediately apparent. If it saves you a few hours per month, then the average person won't notice.

The prettiness of an office suite, on the other hand, is immediately apparent. The average person can load it up and go "ooh" or "ugh" straight away.

The OP's point stands: it's not about who's better, it's about who can impress the average end-user immediately. In the case of office suites, this is manifested as "prettiness wins". In the case of search engines, this is manifested as "relevant results win".

Re:It's not shiney enough.

[biglig2]

No, it's because when a serious bank, warehouse, or whatever finds an application that works, they leave it the hell alone. Suppose they do an upgrade. One of two things will happen:
1) New version still works, and looks nicer.
2) New version no longer works.

The benfits on 1 do not outway the disaster of 2.

Re:We want verifiable results

[pembo13]

I do not think I understand your "wish" properly. Fonts aren't a problem for me, but I know this does mean that there is no problem. Could you better explain?