The problems discovered were pretty much valid stuff for either desktop - and we tested both desktops. Once the first wave of geeks has lost interest in the site and it passes the frontpage of slashdot, you might want to go back and discover that there are KDE videos up too, if that is really important.
Both desktops suffer from similar problems anyway. Test one and it very likely applies to the other as well.
Also, more importantly, whatever was tested was a mix. It was a distro with both "KDE" and "Gnome" applications - whether it was "gnome panel" or "kde kicker" that displayed the main menu is pretty much irrelevant when the user doesnt find the right menu entry. The labels are the same anyway since they come from the software packages.
It's about time we started to look at the real world: people use a diverse mix of software - whatever does the job, whatever their sysadmins or distro packages for them. We should care about the whole "free desktop", not just one single project really.
It's true that in order to get statistical results you need a large population to test. But this is not statistics - this is an attempt to find practical cases to improve the software. Even a small amount of tests will tell you more than your hackers will fix in a few weeks. Then bring in another five people and test more..
Well, actually doing the tests yourself gives you a lot more information than what is just apparent at the first glance. It makes you see the user interface with a better perspective. You will also see more general problems in how people use the computer etc. This all is useful data to us.
It's very easy to be an armchair critic with ideas how to do it better. Please go, and do it also your way, that would benefit us all. Just posting on slashdot about it does not..:)
But there are a lot of people who need it. I use terminals myself too for tasks that make sense - compiling stuff (other peoples code mostly:) and for IRC (never got used to xchat and such).
But for non-text stuff like using the Gimp, editing and finding photos etc, there really needs to be a good file selector, it's about fricken time and I'm excited to see it happen now. It needs to have good keyboard shortcuts too, so one can use it without the mouse, like when saving a document from a text editor - where you are not grabbing the mouse all the time.
The commandline has its uses, but I much rather find photos by thumbnails than by looking at the filenames:)/tuomas
Believe me, "Helix Code" was just as weird at first..
A name just gets a meaning from things that are associated with it, it is just a "label" for a group of things. Ximian is pretty ok, it could be a lot worse, like gWhiz or something:o)
Personally, I hate flat panels and Trinitron? monitors.
Trinitron monitors offer a very good contrast and a nice sharp image though.
And my opinion is for normal pixel graphics 1600x1200 on a 21" screen is closing to the maximum, unless one does resolution-independent
graphics (vectors or 3D modelling) the pixels get too small. I repeatedly need to zoom in the Gimp to see the detail, and my monitor does have a very crisp image. Getting an awfully high resolution on a screen is not always the ultimate satisfaction. On a 19" screen 1280x1024 is pretty much ideal. So if you really want to get 1600x1200 or larger resolution for screen estate, I highly suggest getting a 21" screen.
All this from my experience in the graphic arts field, having worked on 15", 19" and 21" screens. Now there are sure going to be those of you who claim that running 1600x1200 on a 14" screen is so cool, but dude, you only have one pair of eyes for your lifetime.:) And this is just my personal opinion anyway...
As the site went down thanks to the HTTP Cannon,
I cant check the original article, but somehow I
think this is not quite targeted for home users in
the first place...
first, make the dialogs customisable, and make it so that you can bundle and pair them anyway you want (yes, like photoshop)
Yes, this would be cool. I'm sure such patches would be gladly accepted.
And yes, as someone else mentioned earlier this does stink for people of small resolutions
Well.. if you really work on graphics you need a bigger screen no matter what program you happen to use. The images alone need space:)
thirdly, why not have "always on top" functionality for them?
This is more a windowmanager thing. You can configure any windowmanager to do this for you.
but what the heck is that ugly yellow and black border around my image?
That is the layer border, you can turn it invisible with Ctrl-T. Visible borders are handy if you have layers that are smaller than the image.
gimp is one step ahead with it's menus though, i have to say that. having everything off the rightclick menu is somewhat nice, so that i don't have to travel 5,000 miles across the screen every time i want something. ...might i add that the menus go too many sections
Yes, I personally agree. The right-click menu is IMHO one of the best things in gimp - although it IS very deep. But blah, there are lots of plugins there that fill it up. I think that is a good thing. I dont find the menus SO hard.. You can always assign the dynamic shortcuts to often needed stuff (go to a menu and press a key combination like alt-z and see it getting assigned to that menu item.)
And, after all, Photoshop on a Mac is not that different from Gimp interface, the 'one big mother window with all the stuff inside' is just an evil hack that windows uses because you dont have a virtual screen or anything like that.. I really dislike it. This is X.:)
I am not saying that making your screen look like Quake increases productivity or is 'cool' but I just wonder _if_ nobody cares for themes, why do places like themes.org and winamp skin stuff get so much hits?:) Why are we always drooling for screenshots when there is a new app in town?
I guess it is something like you want to show you can control the computer and thus make it look different. "This is my computer and I can do what I want" - maybe it is the same freedom that makes people use open-source software. Like "nobody is gonna tell ME what my desktop shall look like"..
Of course this has nothing to do with 'good' or 'bad' interface, there are good themes (I use the E-mac theme for E - it is pretty clean and nice - which is, again, my opinion), and there are always not that good themes - like with all things in this world.
Basically themes are not a 'gui'. They are just pretty wrapping over the real interface - it is more like if the application has weird interface you cant make it more intuitive with themes - or the opposite. The gui dont change - it still has the same widgets and layout - it just may look different. (Ok, some mp3 players have themable GUI too, but IMHO that is a bit different thing - if we are talking of word processors and such things - in general you dont change the gui with themes)
..and as always, this is just my view from my sandbox;)
Hrm.. I just wonder how many of you have actually tried to use E past the 'hey this key doesnt work! suck!' -phase? It is not your afterstep. it is not windowmaker. it is not fvwm2. I have used all of those, and I have enjoyed most of them.
I recently switched to use Gnome and Enlightenment. Try the E-mac theme from e.themes.org, it is very nice and clean. also make sure you install e-conf so you can configure your familiar keyboard shortcuts to work in E.
I am surprized, since E is not that bloat anymore. The amount of bloat is very nuch dependendt of the theme used.
I mean it has been much slower and it crashed quite often before. But I have used it for about one and a half weeks in _real work_ stuff and it hasnt crashed. (No, I dont restart X every morning)
Also, I think E and icewm have the most gnome support implemented so I can really drag urls from my netscape to the desktop and thus save bookmarks.. whee!
Like someone mentioned above, we need to remember E is raster's freetime project. He is paid by redhat to work on gnome, but E is his private game.
Since you bothered to read this far, check out my screenshot too.:)
Slashdot Mirror
The problems discovered were pretty much valid stuff for either desktop - and we tested both desktops. Once the first wave of geeks has lost interest in the site and it passes the frontpage of slashdot, you might want to go back and discover that there are KDE videos up too, if that is really important.
Both desktops suffer from similar problems anyway. Test one and it very likely applies to the other as well.
Also, more importantly, whatever was tested was a mix. It was a distro with both "KDE" and "Gnome" applications - whether it was "gnome panel" or "kde kicker" that displayed the main menu is pretty much irrelevant when the user doesnt find the right menu entry. The labels are the same anyway since they come from the software packages.
It's about time we started to look at the real world: people use a diverse mix of software - whatever does the job, whatever their sysadmins or distro packages for them. We should care about the whole "free desktop", not just one single project really.
Have you actually ever done any tests yourself? :)
It's true that in order to get statistical results you need a large population to test. But this is not statistics - this is an attempt to find practical cases to improve the software. Even a small amount of tests will tell you more than your hackers will fix in a few weeks. Then bring in another five people and test more..
Well, actually doing the tests yourself gives you a lot more information than what is just apparent at the first glance. It makes you see the user interface with a better perspective. You will also see more general problems in how people use the computer etc. This all is useful data to us.
:)
It's very easy to be an armchair critic with ideas how to do it better. Please go, and do it also your way, that would benefit us all. Just posting on slashdot about it does not..
It wont :)
:) and for IRC (never got used to xchat and such).
:) /tuomas
But there are a lot of people who need it. I use terminals myself too for tasks that make sense - compiling stuff (other peoples code mostly
But for non-text stuff like using the Gimp, editing and finding photos etc, there really needs to be a good file selector, it's about fricken time and I'm excited to see it happen now. It needs to have good keyboard shortcuts too, so one can use it without the mouse, like when saving a document from a text editor - where you are not grabbing the mouse all the time.
The commandline has its uses, but I much rather find photos by thumbnails than by looking at the filenames
Rob Malda apparently ;-)
:^)
We've been sending him a new one for ages but I guess it wont fit the legacy slashdot page style according to him
Tig
Believe me, "Helix Code" was just as weird at first..
A name just gets a meaning from things that are associated with it, it is just a "label" for a group of things. Ximian is pretty ok, it could be a lot worse, like gWhiz or something :o)
Personally, I hate flat panels and Trinitron? monitors.
Trinitron monitors offer a very good contrast and a nice sharp image though.
And my opinion is for normal pixel graphics 1600x1200 on a 21" screen is closing to the maximum, unless one does resolution-independent graphics (vectors or 3D modelling) the pixels get too small. I repeatedly need to zoom in the Gimp to see the detail, and my monitor does have a very crisp image. Getting an awfully high resolution on a screen is not always the ultimate satisfaction. On a 19" screen 1280x1024 is pretty much ideal. So if you really want to get 1600x1200 or larger resolution for screen estate, I highly suggest getting a 21" screen.
All this from my experience in the graphic arts field, having worked on 15", 19" and 21" screens. Now there are sure going to be those of you who claim that running 1600x1200 on a 14" screen is so cool, but dude, you only have one pair of eyes for your lifetime. :) And this is just my personal opinion anyway...
As the site went down thanks to the HTTP Cannon, I cant check the original article, but somehow I think this is not quite targeted for home users in the first place...
Thanks guys : ) I personally like that splash a lot too.
Skript kiddies dont write things. They download a ZIP with the EXE.
/tig
Umm, the webpage text is a bit alpha too :)
Gotta revise that when I finish this sawmill theme..
/tig
Good one, zeno :)
Tig
Oh, we already have a Lens Flare plugin for the gimp.
Tig
(yes. this was a joke.)
So go get a white shirt and a magic marker?
Tig
first, make the dialogs customisable, and make it so that you can bundle and pair them anyway you want (yes, like photoshop)
Yes, this would be cool. I'm sure such patches would be gladly accepted.
And yes, as someone else mentioned earlier this does stink for people of small resolutions
Well.. if you really work on graphics you need a bigger screen no matter what program you happen to use. The images alone need space :)
thirdly, why not have "always on top" functionality for them?
This is more a windowmanager thing. You can configure any windowmanager to do this for you.
but what the heck is that ugly yellow and black border around my image?
That is the layer border, you can turn it invisible with Ctrl-T. Visible borders are handy if you have layers that are smaller than the image.
gimp is one step ahead with it's menus though, i have to say that. having everything off the rightclick menu is somewhat nice, so that i don't have to travel 5,000 miles across the screen every time i want something.
...might i add that the menus go too many sections
Yes, I personally agree. The right-click menu is IMHO one of the best things in gimp - although it IS very deep. But blah, there are lots of plugins there that fill it up. I think that is a good thing. I dont find the menus SO hard.. You can always assign the dynamic shortcuts to often needed stuff (go to a menu and press a key combination like alt-z and see it getting assigned to that menu item.)
And, after all, Photoshop on a Mac is not that different from Gimp interface, the 'one big mother window with all the stuff inside' is just an evil hack that windows uses because you dont have a virtual screen or anything like that.. I really dislike it. This is X. :)
tigert
Well, usually you thank for things that have :)
actually happened before.. So in that sense it is
past
Redhat Linux is a very cool product - and the
guys have a right mind about free software. Goodie.
Tigert
..or "Rub the IRC and the guys will help :)"
It's all of the Linux community, the support is great. And I think #debian is very good in that.
IMHO the logo is right on place.
Tig
Heh..
:)
Try to design something entirely original these days...
I think the swirl logo is great.
Tig
I am not saying that making your screen look like Quake increases productivity or is 'cool' but I just wonder _if_ nobody cares for themes, why do places like themes.org and winamp skin stuff get so much hits? :) Why are we always drooling for screenshots when there is a new app in town?
I guess it is something like you want to show you can control the computer and thus make it look different. "This is my computer and I can do what I want" - maybe it is the same freedom that makes people use open-source software. Like "nobody is gonna tell ME what my desktop shall look like"..
Of course this has nothing to do with 'good' or 'bad' interface, there are good themes (I use the E-mac theme for E - it is pretty clean and nice - which is, again, my opinion), and there are always not that good themes - like with all things in this world.
Basically themes are not a 'gui'. They are just pretty wrapping over the real interface - it is more like if the application has weird interface you cant make it more intuitive with themes - or the opposite. The gui dont change - it still has the same widgets and layout - it just may look different. (Ok, some mp3 players have themable GUI too, but IMHO that is a bit different thing - if we are talking of word processors and such things - in general you dont change the gui with themes)
..and as always, this is just my view from my sandbox ;)
You need to be running the filemanager (gmc) so there is something that accepts those drags
Hrm.. I just wonder how many of you have actually
:)
tried to use E past the 'hey this key doesnt work! suck!' -phase? It is not your afterstep. it is not windowmaker. it is not fvwm2. I have used all of those, and I have enjoyed most of them.
I recently switched to use Gnome and Enlightenment. Try the E-mac theme from e.themes.org, it is very nice and clean. also make sure you install e-conf so you can configure your familiar keyboard shortcuts to work in E.
I am surprized, since E is not that bloat anymore.
The amount of bloat is very nuch dependendt of the theme used.
I mean it has been much slower and it crashed quite often before. But I have used it for about one and a half weeks in _real work_ stuff and it hasnt crashed. (No, I dont restart X every morning)
Also, I think E and icewm have the most gnome support implemented so I can really drag urls from my netscape to the desktop and thus save bookmarks.. whee!
Like someone mentioned above, we need to remember E is raster's freetime project. He is paid by redhat to work on gnome, but E is his private game.
Since you bothered to read this far, check out my screenshot too.
My $1..
And keep in mind this is work in progress.
tigert