[Usability]widget style vs window decoration, (was "cheat to window-manager integration")

[Sunnanvind Fenderson <sunnanvind fenderson com>]

James Ramsey <jjramsey_6x9eq42 yahoo com> writes:
> A) The presence of the term "widget". This is probably
> the yuckiest part. However, the fact of the matter is
> that even if a theme-using user never sees the term
> "widget," he or she will have deal with the fact that
> the theme that changes the widgets and the theme that
> changes the window frames are very different. Somehow
> that has to be conveyed. Any ideas?

I like the word "widget", and it's not particularly harmful for it to
be present.

Before I knew what the name for widgets were, i.e. before I'd heard
the word widget, they were really hard to talk about, and even as a
non-programming user many people would like to do that.

(With "application theme" I'm reading "application specific themes"
which would be very wrong.)

Calling the widget style settings "widget style" is a gentle way for
people to find out that the common name for those clickable
thingamajigs are "widgets".

Here, I'm thinking that there are four kinds of people:
  
  1. Those who click on every preferences entry. These people would
     pretty soon see what the widget style settings dialog was about
     (especially if the help screen was, well, helpful).

  2. Those who only click on the preferences entries they really want
     to change, and never mind the rest. It's somewhat unlikely, but
     possible, that these people would want to change the widget
     style. "Customize-addicts" (like me and some (but not all) people
     I know) tend to belong in category 1.

  3. Those who already know what widgets are. To these people, "widget
     style" should be a good name for this dialog.

-

I think an OS with a gui should be inviting - both to start working
quickly, but also to start learning about geeky stuff, *if the user
wants to*. "Hiding" or "dumbing down" things is a necessary evil, some
of the time, and unnecessary (and thus harmful), sometimes.

Unlike many proprietary gui-providers, we (err, I'm not sure of what I
mean by "we" here, though... the free software movement, maybe?) want
people to be able to transition from "users" to "users and
contributors" as easily as possible, *if they want to*, and not having
two conflicting sets of terminology is probably a good thing.

---

On the very other hand - let me suggest another word for "window
frame", namely "window decorations". I don't know which one is the
most common, some usability testing and statistics may help here.

Sunnanvind