Re: [Usability] Evolution 2.0

[Ali Akcaagac <aliakc web de>]

On Fri, 2003-07-11 at 19:07, Anna Marie Dirks wrote:
> I would love to know how the general ideas behind this design
> strike you, and what suggestions you might make for refining it.

Hello,

I hope my opinion is as welcome as everyones elses opinion. Please exuse
my bad english because it's not my native language. So this said I like
to start explaining.

First of all I am (as many others) are really happy and thankful to
Ximiand for producing this nice Applications, that with no doubt took
you people a lot of time, investigation and probably sleepless nights. I
want to thank you for this nice application that I am using since I left
the Balsa team.

But I like to say the truth how I see it in the moment. I know this may
probably sound a bit demotivating in first but if you think deeper about
this it may (or may not) make sense.

I saw these screenshots some days ago when Ettore announced them on the
Ximian Evolution Hackers list and I have a bit mixed feelings about that
and I am probably the wrong person commenting here too but I think these
mockups are contraproductive to what the usability team tries to achive
within GNOME and I am a bit worried why Ximian is not following the HIG
and the usability recommendations of GNOME in general. While the
pictures DO look nice, they on the otherhand are in no way HIG
compliant.

- Menus have too many entries (from CVS HEAD that I was using now). I
sometimes ask myself what purpose certain elements of the menu entries
have and what they are good for. With other words there are too many
elements in the menus where I could easily say that nearly half of them
(if not more) could be removed or better structured.

- Toolbar is somehow fixed. The elements don't follow the GNOME Menu and
Toolbar capplet from the prefs, Icons partially have labels besides,
some elements have Icons only and so on.

- The new pictures also show more complexity, the buttons are spread
over the entire interface and makes it harder to compare with other
GNOME applications. Some friends of mine even told me that Ximian
Evolution is trying to copy the look and feel of Outlook Professional.
This is no doubt honourable (specially for that price) but how does it
fit into the philosophy of GNOME ?

Now Evolution is being ported to use GNOME 2.x libraries, Evolution is
getting faster, more stable and now is the best time to decide wether
you want to break out of the GNOME barrier and do your own thing with
copying Outlook Professional (which layout MS probably declares as their
own IP) or following the GNOME way by 'at least trying to be as HIG
conform as even possible' including to take care of the advises about
Overload of options, Menu entries, Interface, Toolbar and so on. I know
this is a bit hard specially for a little company like Ximian who really
depends on Ximian Evolution and MONO for their future existence but on
the otherhand we are all working towards ONE direction, we want to
achive, carry, move and think into one direction, as sooner as better.
Said this as sooner it happens as sooner we can be pleased and use an
aesthetics, nice and usable *round* Desktop.

Ok I hope I didn't offended you by this and I am sure that you heard
people asking to HIGIFY Evolution for various times now. I also heard
that you (Ximian) rejected the help from some individuals who spent a
lot of time and gained a lot of knowledge in higification.

I mean what usability advise do you expect from a team of GNOME members
that spent months and years into writing HIG and GNOME specific Advises
if they are not being adopted by the Evolution team.

Maybe you could write me the one or other line as reply (even open here
on the Mailinglist) that may explain your position so I could understand
it better. Please don't feel demotivated by my writing either since I am
only asking and this should still be allowed I think.

friendly regards,

Ali Akcaagac