Re: Window Managers [was: Control Center Plus - gone?]

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Trevor Curtis wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 2002-03-12 at 08:46, Josh Barrow wrote:
> 
> > I think that the ui team decided that it was bad to use the term window
> > manager (which I agree with if that's what they said) and is trying to
> > hide the functionality.
> 
> I'm not a usability guru.. quite the opposite, so excuse the question if
> it seems odd.
> 
> What is wrong with the term Window Manager? What is a better term for
> it?

I'm not sure the UI/GUP team ever "officially" decided that (I could be
wrong, it's been a while since there were any GUP meetings), but IMHO
the main thing wrong with it is that most users should never have to
know or care that there is such a thing as a "window manager".  It
should be a completely transparent feature as it is in Windoze, MacOS,
AmigaOS, NeXT etc.  

Of course we have the luxury that those platforms don't of being able to
swap window managers at will, but that's a fairly advanced feature that
many (most?) people will never use, so any references to "window
managers" are probably best hidden under an Advanced button somewhere. 
As far as most users are concerned, they will probably look for virtual
desktop settings in a Desktop Preferences dialog, window manager theme
settings in a Window Appearance dialog (intermingled with gtk-theming
options), and keybinding options in, er... some other dialog, but you
get the idea :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems