Re: Galeon target users?

> I am pretty familiar with the problem you face, i guess it goes like
> this (adapted from a real case, were word just ate many hours worth of
> document writing without saves) :
> 
> Real user asking you for help :
> 
>   "What happened, this stupid program just did <insert stupid thing that
>   should not have happened>"
> 
> You : 
> 
>   "What did you do ?"
> 
> Real user :
> 
>   "I did nothing, it just did it."
> 
> You : 
> 
>   "Well, tell me what you were doing, what button, menu or something did
>   you press ?"
> 
> Real user : 
> 
>   "I didn't do anything, it just went away, ..."
> 
> ... Real user ends up crying because the work has to be finished
> tommorow morning and it is 10 o'clock in the evening.
> 
> Is that what you mean ? Do you really think this person would not
> willingly learn how to correctly use a program like galeon ? Especially
> since galeon is not saddled with decenies of stupid UI design like word
> is ?

You just look at the thing from the wrong perspective. The designer need
to make the user available an interface that is easy to use (= he doesnt
need to learn things to use it), it's not the silly user that needs to
learn. This is exactly the reason because an ui need to be intuitive,
because the user doesnt need, doesnt want, doesnt have time to waste
learning how to use computers.
 
> > >You are targeting potential future users, by antagonizing the
> > >existing user base, this is no good way, better to think about a way to
> > >satisfy everyone
> > 
> > I dont plan to satisfy everyone ! That's the better way to make no one happy.
> 
> And what do you think is happening right now ? Why were you speaking
> about a code fork ?

I'm making unhappy some of the people subscribed to this mailing list.
They are not in my target users, so I dont need to make them happy.

> > > and not forget that even basic users will be able to
> > >evolve and learn more things, especially if gnome/galeon provides them
> > >an environment where they are not afraid that any minor change will
> > >break everything.
> > >
> > 
> > Oh damn, you keep to want to educate people that doesnt really need to be
> > educated. They know how to do their work very well. Our work is to provide
> > them tools that allow them to get their work done, not to force them to
> > learn how computers works.
> 
> Professional deformation i guess, ...
> 
> Ok, but remember the HIG, it says to write code for _all_ the users, not
> only part of them. You should not limit the code so a part of the user
> cannot shot themself in the foot, and in the process block another group
> from getting their work done.
> 

You are obviously interpreting the HIG in a wrong way. This is proved by
the fact that the main author, this Seth that Philip hate so much, keep
asking gnome people to decide what the target users of gnome should be.

Marco




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