Re: [Usability]Attempt at constructive criticism - "Why Gnome 2 sucks for me"

[Bart Kelsey <kelsey 14 osu edu>]

> On the other hand, in Open Source, many settings tend to be _way_ beyond
> what Microsoft or Apple would put in 'advanced settings' or similar. A
> case in point is fine detail of window and keyboard behaviour in the KDE
> control panel; some of this is so arcane I suspect a tiny fraction of
> users will even understand what many of the options mean*. Gnome is a
> _vast_ improvement on this.
That's a good point, but I think it's better not to be overly 
reactionary.  Removing advanced settings altogether isn't a particularly 
good way of dealing with things.  Making an interface overly simple may 
be attractive to new users, but as they start to get comfortable, 
they'll wonder why they can't change the little things about it that 
annoy them.

> I rather like Mozilla's approach where, in the main, sensible decisions
> have been taken about what can be presented in the Preferences dialogue
> and the rest of the adjustable parameters, as well as those made
> available from that dialogue, are in a text file (prefs.js) so can still
> be accessed.
I rather *don't* like it.  When searching for complete documentation on 
prefs.js, what I found was a message with someone saying "if they don't 
know what the preferences are already, they shouldn't be changing them." 
As far as I know, this ludicrous attitude has continued, and complete 
prefs.js documentation has so far failed to surface.  (If anyone knows 
otherwise, *please* let me know, as I would love to see some real 
prefs.js documentation.)

Also, there's absolutely no reason that prefs.js can't be changed into 
an "Advanced Settings" dialog.  Even some power users enjoy the 
convenience of not having to wade through text files to make changes.

At any rate, I'm all about simplifying Gnome's interface, but I'm really 
sad to see that done at the expense of power users.  What's really wrong 
with an "Advanced Preferences" dialog?  It lets the inexperienced users 
stay with the simple, default interface, and at the same time allows the 
power users to tweak the UI the way they like it.