Re: [Usability] RFC: removing some colors from the panel...

[Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>]

I think it's a bad idea. It won't really improve usability. And what do
you do for, say, the cpu/mem/net usage applet? Black on black isn't
usable. Grey on black wouldn't be any more usable either. And, then,
when something important happens, you will have an odd mix of grayscale
and color. Of course, the panel could just keep everything grayscale,
too. But that kind of defeats the purpose of notifications.

Of course, the fact that everything in the "panel" in Mac OS X is
grayscale works for them. And it works for them, because they have
total control over it. There are no themes. They aren't notifications.
They are meant to give you quick access to some application, and they
all behave like menus. Because they all are menus, and they are in the
menu bar.

Simply fading everything to grayscale in GTK+ will also probably confuse
the user into thinking that the items are inaccessible. What about the
desktop? There are many more colors on my desktop, than there are on the
panel, with all the documents, launchers, and thumbnails.

If your eye is constantly going to the panel, then it seems to me like
there may be problems with individual things in the panel. Or perhaps
your eye is just trained by muscle reflex to look at the panel every now
and then to see if anything interesting is happening. Maybe it's to
check on the weather, or the time, or instant messages. Maybe there are
items in your panel which are too heavily animated, that cause you to
look there. I don't know. Maybe you've shoved the panel full of
launchers with largely varying colors in the icons, and that distracts
you.

"Apple does it" is good for thought, but shouldn't be the entire
heuristic used in the design process. They do just as many things
for historic or technical reasons, as they do for usability ones. My
suggestion would be to first figure out why your eye keeps going to
the panel. I don't believe "color" is the reason. If it were, your
eye might spend more time on the desktop, than on the panel. Would
be nice to figure out what the exact problem is, and examine other
users as well. There are a lot more people using the machine, than
the few people who were in Stuttgart that came up with the idea of
moving everything to grayscale.

Please don't use a giant laser on the moon, to kill a mosquito.

-- dobey