Re: [Usability] Re: Suggestion for the actual UI of GTK+'s New FileSelector

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Uno Engborg wrote:

> True, but in the real world people do mix and match, and not taking this
> into account, most people end up with desktops that are far worse than
> win95.

Worse than win95? I can hardly imagine. ;-)

But the mix & match phenomenon is a fact of life. On the windows platform
alone there are a multitude of file selectors in use. We can only try to
make our offering internally consistent as much as we can, but external
consistency is a lost cause.

> Unfortunately we have a lot of historical luggage to carry. For that we
> only can blame old time open source developers that usually had the
> macho attitude, that if you can't do it from the command line it is not
> worh doing, and people that can't use a "simple" command line are
> stupid.

Agreed.

> of our potential users.  So if we do it completely different we must
> make sure it is that much better, that it is worth that extra learning
> effort. If it isn't we should stay with a similar solution.

That depends on whether on the familiarity of our target audience with
other systems. In my opinion, the holy grail for GNOME is to create an
environment that Just Works, that even newbies can use without having to
learn a lot about the internals of the computer. A file selector, in any
shape or form, stands in the way of this goal, but unfortunately it is
required because many apps just won't work without it.

> typing speed. In fact there have bin several people that have tried. But
> most of us still prefer QUERTY because the effort to learn a new keybord
> isn't justyfied by the increase in typing speed.

Well *if* I had a DVORAK at my disposal here I'd certainly want to try it
sometime. :-)

> and problems on small screens. New users comming to Gnome from Microsoft
> or KDE and would have an easier time identifying the shortcuts as
> shortcuts if they are in a fammiliar place, and people that mix and

You might be right, but then again people coming from windows will look
for their C: drive in vain.

PS Would you mind setting your mail client to break lines at 78 chars?
Thanks.

regards,

-- 
Reinout van Schouwen			Artificial Intelligence student
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778