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

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel liebesgedichte net>]

On Thu, 2002-08-29 at 16:01, Bart Kelsey wrote:
> 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.
[...]
> 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.


Simple answer: There shouldn't be "little things that annoy them". If
something like that is found, it should be fixed not made a preference.
There are only a few things that really require a preference for
whatever reason (left handed or right handed mouse is a good example).
The problem is, how to decide which preferences are needed and usefull
and which aren't? There are two popular ways that I'm aware of:
1) Putting every preference in that users ask for, making sure that
everybody will find a preference if he looks for it. If the interface
becomes too bloated, some options are packed into "advanced" dialogs.
2) Developers try to find good compromises and the best way to do
things. 

Of course what we see currently in GNOME (and Windows and Mac OS, etc)
is the latter. This always comes at the price that some people will be
pissed off (as you probably already noticed ;)). But it has several
advantages, like a much simpler code base, bugs are easier to track
(because most people will run almost the same setup), simple and
efficient preference dialogs and most of all: Developers have to spend
more time to "get it right". Adding preferences often is an excuse not
to find the right solution. Most of the times you have tradeoffs (for
example a tradeoff between efficience and visual appeal or between
convenience and functionality), while a solution could have been found
that combines those advantages without taking anything away for most
users. 
There is also this common misconception that the goal of this would be
simply to make the desktop easier to understand while "power users"
would certainly not like it. This is not true. Most power users would
actually rather spend there time hacking on new applications (or owning
the latest 1337 Quake league ;)) instead of fiddling with the desktop
preferences until it works well for them. I once thought that the
configurability of the free desktops would be a good thing but after
months of playing with them (a time that was fun but not very
productive), I felt stupid when I noticed that I could get more work
done faster and also have more fun with a system like Windows. That was
simply because it "just worked" and didn't get into my way. The Windows
developers created a system that worked well from the beginning, even if
not always most efficient. Of course after a while I missed the free
software world and to my pleasent surprise I found out that GNOME was
now developed into something similar, partly even more convenient than a
Windows desktop. It is designed not to get into my way and just be
efficient and convenient to use. I love it. And even if I don't agree
with everything (for example I'm not a big fan of the Windows-style
window border button layout of Metacity ;)), it's just a pleasure to
use. Much more than a desktop that makes everything configurable and
fakes me into the believe that I could do everything that i want.
This is why Gnome 2 rocks for me. 
Of course there are people who have really unusual behaviours and refuse
to learn something new or people who simply enjoy spending a lot of
there time configuring the desktop. Those will be pissed, sure. But in
my experience it's wrong that those are the majority of all "power
users". Most of them usually understand the value of all this, once
somebody explains it to them or they get more used to it. They are just
shocked because there are so few preferences but then after a while they
realise, that they also need much less preferences to make the desktop
usable for them. 
And please consider this: There is KDE and several other free software
projects that go the "make everything configurable and let the user
create his own GUI experience" way. So GNOME is the only free choice for
people like me, which enjoy something that just works. It should at
least deserve a chance and not be reverted, just because some people are
afraid of change. And there are _always_ some vocal people who are
against change. You can't make severe progression without pissing some
of those people off. :/ 
"If it aint broke don't fix it" simply isn't true as good as it might
sound. If it would be true, we would still travel on horses.

Please let's not flame about this, because if anything is taking away
the fun of GNOME for me, it's those flames. :)

- Daniel