The question of preferences

[SteveRiley]

Reading through the comments on Phoronix's post about GNOME 3.4, someone made reference to an old but very interesting article, "Free software UI." Scroll down to the section "The question of preferences" and follow through to the end.

I'll mention the major points here:

• Too many preferences means you can't find any of them
• Preferences really substantively damage QA and testing
• Preferences make integration and good UI difficult
• Preferences keep people from fixing real bugs
• Preferences can confuse many users
• The preferences dialog is finite in size

Given that some of us prefer KDE precisely because of its rich manifestation of preferences, I'd be curious how you react to what's in that article.

[sithlord48]

Re: The question of preferences

that sounds like a prospective of a minimalist. yes options can be confusing to people. there is an art to good gui creation. take as an example dolphin. its has a simple gui and lots of preferences but they are not placed a way that the user should be imitimated by them you never even have to see them if you don't want to.

now i do install for lots of people i have about 20 or so users who i maintain machines for , all running kubuntu.i try to stress is the customization aspect, its very useful to set up the gui in kde so you can use it effectively. instead of getting the expected responce something like how usefull this will be instead mostly i get a why would i change stuff questioni think a big part of the problem is that people are afraid to try to change things.maybe its a fault of being told how to use the computer from windows and mac os.

[SteveRiley]

Re: The question of preferences

i think a big part of the problem is that people are afraid to try to change things.maybe its a fault of being told how to use the computer from windows and mac os.

This could be old news for some of you, but if you haven't seen it and you have a Windows box or VM handy, create a new folder (doesn't matter where, the desktop is convenient) and name it

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Welcome to Preferences Hell

[GreyGeek]

Re: The question of preferences

What about this backdoor secretly created by the president of the Windows division:
SinofskyBackdoor.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}


P.S.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: The question of preferences

i think a big part of the problem is that people are afraid to try to change things.maybe its a fault of being told how to use the computer from windows and mac os.

This could be old news for some of you, but if you haven't seen it and you have a Windows box or VM handy, create a new folder (doesn't matter where, the desktop is convenient) and name it

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Welcome to Preferences Hell

For those of us who [luckily] do not have access to windoze, could you summarize or post screenshots of what this does? I've deduced that it's not pleasant, and now my curiosity is piqued!

Given that some of us prefer KDE precisely because of its rich manifestation of preferences

One of the many things I love about KDE is its infinite customization options. I also like how it doesn't force a lot of stuff on new users, so those who may be intimidated by a lot of customization aren't affected by it, while those of us who like customizing the hell out of our installations are free to do so.

[SteveRiley]

Re: The question of preferences

For those of us who [luckily] do not have access to windoze, could you summarize or post screenshots of what this does? I've deduced that it's not pleasant, and now my curiosity is piqued!

Oh, Jerry and I are more making fun of it than anything else. It's a folder with 274 preference items. Here's what it looks like (click to embiggen):

[img width=360]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HYR7Br3NQME/TqyQmncgcYI/AAAAAAAAEYU/AlAfbUUu-js/s576/god-mode.png[/img]

You can use anything you want in front of the UUID when you name the folder. "GodMode" became popular. It isn't dangerous, it doesn't reveal any hidden settings.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: The question of preferences

Ah, I see. Thanks, Steve.

Has windoze copied *nix yet as far as having multiple desktops? When I tell windoze users that I've had multiple desktops since I started using UNIX in 1985 they're stunned. (Of course, back in the '80s, they were called consoles, not desktops, but the idea is basically the same.)

[SteveRiley]

Re: The question of preferences

Has windoze copied *nix yet as far as having multiple desktops?

Funny thing about that... The core OS has supported multiple desktop objects since Windows 2000. With a couple exceptions, Microsoft has relied on third parties to create utilities to expose the functionality.

Microsoft's Virtual Desktop Manager, part of the Windows XP PowerToys set, actually doesn't rely on this; instead, it creates a window-grouping object. When you click from one "desktop" to another, it actually minimizes and hides all the windows in that group and then unhides and restores the windows in the other group. VDM doesn't work on Vista or Windows 7.

The Sysinternals tool Desktops is better. It creates true desktop objects and binds application windows to these objects. It's pretty lean and works on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. All in just a 60 KB download.

Usually, people find out about multiple desktop support from utilities that come with their graphics cards. I've used nVidia's nView, which worked well enough. I don't know what ATI might offer.