Re: UI design [was Owen Taylor's paper]

On Thu, 19 Sep 2002 08:54:32 -0500, you wrote:

>Only if they don't bother to *READ* the dialogs and buttons.
>If it's new, never assume you know what it is doing. That's
>asking for trouble. If you do make assumptions, you deserve
>what you get.

The problem is this.  Assume 2 different applications, application A
is written for Gnome2 and application B is written for KDE.

Both have a dialog of the form yes/no to check whether you really want
to delete something.

You accidentally select delete and so want to choose no.

Now with A the no option would be the left button, but with
application B the no option is the right button.

Now if you strictly use either Gnome2 applications or KDE applications
then this will not be an issue.  You will after a short while
instinctively know whether to click on the left or right button as is
appropriate for your chosen desktop.

Now lets look at the poor user who is given the Red Hat solution.

Red Hat has created themes for both KDE and Gnome so that all the
applications now look similar (so no visual clues as to which UI you
are currently using).

Red Hat has put KDE apps onto the main Gnome menus, and Gnome apps
onto the main KDE menus.  So our poor user will unknowingly being
using two different UI designs.

The possibility of the user "accidentally" deleting something has now
increased dramatically because the user has been provided with a
desktop that knowingly uses 2 different UI layouts and yet has on
purpose removed any visual clues.

I am not saying that either KDE or Gnome are the "right" way or the
"wrong" way.  What I say is that the attempt to treat the 2
environments as the same and hence mix and match KDE and Gnome2 apps
is a mistake although I can understand the financial/manpower
reasoning behind the attempt.

Whether the Linux community likes it or not the Gnome decision to go
with the Mac style interface means that KDE and Gnome will never offer
the interoperability that many people want (and perhaps that is a
partial reason for the Gnome decision).  Neither desktop is going
away, and this means anyone putting together a distribution either
needs to choose KDE, Gnome, or both.