GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

[Michael Fulbright <msf redhat com>]

I applaud the recent rejuvenation of the GNOME UI effort. I hope that the
people working on it can give us regular drafts for comments. I would
advise them not to try and make it too much of a "tell us what you want
and we'll add it all" - we need a few people with UI experience to
draft a proposal, and then get comments from everyone. Otherwise you'll get
what we had last time.

The best way I can see to help usability FAST is to get the KDE/GNOME
window manager spec ironed out. I think the worst aspect of the current
GNOME desktop to new users (according to all the feedback email I
get since my email address is in every GNOME RPM :) is the abitrary
distinction between the GNOME desktop and the window manager. Currently
the GNOME desktop and the window manager fight over things like
background settings and mouse clicks on the desktop.  Some window managers
claim to support GNOME, and yet when in 'GNOME mode' they throw up their
own panel equivalent, icons, etc.  The words 'window manager' should never
show up on the desktop imho - users should not have to learn about them.

The worst offender are themes - on the Red Hat 6.0 tour I talked to alot
of people about GNOME and KDE.  Most people seem to perceive more features
in GNOME, but did not like having to deal with the window manager. In KDE
this is not an issue.  I had numerous people ask me why they have to
configure TWO themes. I think the GNOME project should very seriously consider
pursuing (with great vigor) a window manager for GNOME that gives us the
level of control over the environment that allows us to hide the fact
a window manager is even running from the novice user.

Note I have advocated two things:

 1) Get the spec worked out in common for both the GNOME and KDE environments.
    A window manager author will then have a single target and it is
    much more likely window managers will properly work with both.

 2) For the much larger class of potential new users (compared to the small
    current user base of Linux) we should have a window manager we have
    designed that works closely with GNOME (via CORBA) that completely
    hides the window manager from the user. Themes will be shared with
    gtk+ themes, the issue of who owns the background will be gone, the
    pager and task list applets won't have to use broken X11 tricks to
    get window lists, etc.

Of all the reasons people pick GNOME versus KDE, I think the fact that
GNOME is supposedly window manager independent is very low on the list of
reasons.  It certainly is not one of the top three.  I think its time
to consider making a distinction between "GNOME compliant" window manager
and "GNOME enhanced" window managers.  The later is what a newbie will
want to use.

We can satisfy both the seasoned Linux users who have a favorite window manager
as well as the new user who just wants it to work. I think in terms of
usability we have a great deal to address for the later when in comes to
the window manager.

Next on the list would be the file manager, but this email is already too long.

Dr Mike