Re: [Usability] Re: [Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME

[Andreas Tille <tillea rki de>]

On Wed, 14 Dec 2005, Olav Vitters wrote:

> >      But it became worse than I expected.  First I hate if a program just
> >      overrides my desktop background.  (Don't tell me, I could nautilus
>
> That is not a usability feature. Nautilus is responsible for drawing
> the desktop in GNOME. That is it. You seem to be using some other
> desktop environment and not GNOME. Everywhere you can set the
> background (image / color) it will tell nautilus to do that. I think
> having a desktop background is not a strange usability feature.
>
> Try setting the background color in GNOME... I think it is good that
> GNOME has a preference for that.

I want xplanet to draw my background.  Gnome just overrides xplanet
and this sucks.

> >      But it became even worse.  Not only that it draws my desktop where I
> >      do not want it to draw - a "nice usability feature" was added at some
> >      point:  Nautilus now bloats my desktop with lots of new windows if
> >      I want to switch (hey, switch!!! not add) folders.  Even when I
> >      had to use the evil explorer I was able to get rid of this missfeature
> >      after less than 5 minutes.  Same applies as above: If I can not ...
> >      I will kill the process.
>
> There is a setting for that.

I repeat:  I'm not willing to seek longer than 5 minutes to find this
perfectly hidden setting.  This has nothing to do with usability.

> That is just session management. When an important app crashes it will
> restart it. Remove nautilus from the session and you are done. IIRC
> gnome-panel, metacity and nautilus are set in the session like that.
>
> I think this is more of a 'don't-do-it-then'.

Don't do what?  Don't try to use your skills you gathered over several
years.  Just use the box as we want you to use it?  Isn't exactly this
kind of thinking the problem that whas criticised?

> IIRC (very large IIRC) this was not re-implemented as it broke
> accessibility (tab is used for focus switching) and no-one had a good
> idea to work around it.

Midnight commander uses <ESC><Tab> because <Tab> is used for other
purpose - at least I could live with this ...

> That is just a bug, not some usability design issue. I am pretty amazed
> that you think this is a usability issue.

Well, some usability issues of Gnome look like bugs and some bugs look
like usability issues.  How shouild I differenciate?

> You will see that with the next GNOME version the new feature will work
> better and better. Although the newer GNOME might break another
> feature. Not perfect, but pretty much how I look at it.

I think I understand how Free Software works.  That's why I wrote this
mail as response or kind of a bug report.

Kind regards

         Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de