"The first KDE 4 release will come along with several major changes compared to KDE 3.x. While explanations for these changes have been posted at several places before there is a central list missing which explains the reasons to normal users. This post lists some hot topics and tries to shed some light on the reasons behind certain decisions." Update: The release date for KDE 4.0 has been postponed from mid-December to January 11th 2008. I'll be sure to give you my address, Aaron. Insert smiley face.
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Member since:2007-07-10
speaking of condescending feelings, did you ever figure that the menu designers figured what should go in a menu?
I'd hate for KDE4 to end up being compared to Vista (or Leopard, for that matter) in the arena of 'unpreparedness'. The kommunity has produced incredible work so far, no reason to believe they can't do it again.
Edited 2007-12-01 20:43
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
> testing cards seems to get played a lot
yes, it's absurd that actual data is used instead of just personal musings. maybe that's what's wrong with all the various fields in science. repeatable experimentation is such a silly idea.
</sarcasm>
seriously though, there are aesthetic issues to take into consideration, there are general usability principles to keep in mind ... and those are augmented by testing.
having people offering personal opinions on a whim really doesn't help much. it just leads to a cacophony of equally valid statements with no way to measure what makes for a good solution.
it may be more "fun" to just to sit in an armchair and expound randomly, but .. yeah .. the software stands a better chance to improve this way.
Member since:2006-01-12
while this might be true, things that shouldn't be in a menu (favorite aps/places i.e.) are put in a menu... perhaps it's done in the most optimal way to put it in a menu, but did any of the menu designers figured that these things don't belong there in the first place?
Why not?
Where's the part of the 10 commandments that says "thou shalt not put bookmarks in the Kmenu; they're fine in a bookmark menu though"?
I think allowing people to put places in their menu like regular entries is a no-brainer, and it's just a minor leap from there to having categories for all apps, favs and places.
I really don't see how having those buttons at the bottom of kickoff will confuse anyone or how it is a major hurdle to usability, because if you don't use any of the buttons apart from the "applications" button, they won't slow you down in any way.
What I don't like is the "change levels in situ" part. My resolution is 1280x1024 and the (thoroughly oversized, too many apps... =) Windows start menu uses almost all of them to display all those tools. Kickoff otoh uses just that single column. Oh, I can enlarge it until it at least doesn't waste all that vertical space, but making it wider is just a waste of pixels because it doesn't give you additional information.
Due to larger and larger displays and more and more being widescreen that's a complete waste of space.
I fear Razor's gonna be even worse. All the stuff I've seen about it talks how it keeps the distances your mouse has to travel down. WTF? Taking the mouse cursor from one corner of the screen to the other takes a fraction of a second, actually finding the menu entry you're looking for is generally much more time consuming and having to look at half a dozen menus with 5 entries is bound to be a lot slower than one larger menu (well organized, with categories the same way Dolphin can group by first letter) with 50 entries.
That said, I'll probably keep using Alt+F2, so what do I care?
EDIT: Let me add that I don't think the article was particularily condescending. It didn't belittle those of a different opinion.
It explained that they had to replace kicker and had to make a choice between keeping the old style menu that was kind of a mess, coming up with something new while -as the delay proves- they were already short on time, or use a design Novell spend a lot of money on and that unlike all possible competitor got actual usability testing and did well in that. Which one would you choose in that case if you try to look at it objectivly?
It also mentions that plasma will make it easy to do a relatively primitive menu like the old one (primitive in the sense that it's static with no bling) or other alternatives and in fact there are already a number of those in development.
KDE's motto's always been "he who codes decides" and SuSE had the code =)
Edited 2007-12-01 22:37
Member since:2006-07-30
Member since:2005-11-11
the kickoff menu discussion is ended with: "there's been thoroughly user testing"
Guess I can skip reading this one then. That horse is so dead. [joke]Besides, I already know why they made each and every change: to annoy me personally[/joke].
thats the beauty of open source. even if the features gets officially put in, anyone can add them on their own.
But how many actually do?
I used to. I had a patchset for Konqueror I maintained for personal use from about 3.3 on that corrected several behaviors I wasn't enamored with. People actually do that sort of thing. I also did it with Litestep back in the day. I don't think I'll be continuing though. Better things to do with my time. The whole job and responsibilities thing.
If anyone wonders, at least one of the behaviors addressed by my Konqi patches was brought up in a bug report, and ignored like I would have expected. One other I remember was a deliberate design decision. Perpetually maintaining patches as the underlying codebase changes gets old. Probably almost everyone is just going to deal with how things are.
So yeah, some people actually do that stuff but if my experience means anything (and it does for me) it doesn't last long. In my case I'm starting to look elsewhere.
*meandering slightly off topic. Not entirely, but one can ignore the following*
It's not just the little things I don't feel like patching anymore. It's that other people also have that "jobs and responsibilities" thing I mentioned earlier. I'm sick of wondering whether software I use frequently is going to get ported over, or further maintained at all. My latest example is Klibido (binary newsreader): basically unmaintained for a year. Relying on volunteer labor keeps leaving me up a creek. In contrast, I'm fairly certain Unison (on OSX) isn't going anywhere.
I love the principles of free software and I used Linux exclusively for about 4 years. I'm not dropping it now but I just don't feel so strongly about expending time and effort and passion getting it working like I'd prefer, or even just working, and KDE4 hasn't helped. That's my thing though not theirs. Hah I'm giving the "it's not you it's me" speech. It feels like a breakup in a way.
Ironically I'm typing this from Konqueror.
Edited 2007-12-02 01:42
Member since:2005-11-14
There are two different concepts here. You claim to be supporting proprietary software but what your arguments actually support is commercial software.
For example, MySQL is free software maintained by a company; as long as that company is doing well, it's not going anywhere. I suppose you mean the same with Unison: as long as it's profitable, you'll be able to use it. Let's not ignore the possibility of these companies going out of business.
Non-commercial software can stop being maintained when the developer loses interest. That applies to both free software and proprietary as well, and it can happen as non-commercial is often done as a hobby (there are other categories though, like academic, etc).
In both cases, the difference is that free software can be picked up by anyone interested, which is not the case for proprietary software. If Unison's developer goes out of business, you're screwed and will have to stop using it eventually. If the maintainer of Klibido loses interest, you're only screwed if nobody else steps up to the plate, and it could be anybody really. It's not uncommon to see free software changing maintainers.
Member since:2005-07-06
> my Konqi patches was brought up in a bug report,
do you have a br#?
> and ignored like I would have expected
the implication that bugs as a generality get ignored is overly broad and not ime correct. there are two types of bugs that get ignored: those filed against products which are over-reported on already given the # of people working on it (khtml comes to mind) and those that are simply filed poorly.
> I'm fairly certain Unison (on OSX) isn't going
> anywhere.
if we ignore all the successfully maintained mainstream free software and all the abandonware in the proprietary world, i could perhaps agree. i just don't like ignoring reality like that, though. 
Member since:
2005-08-15
When I read this post, though it explains a lot, I feel like the author is acting a bit condescending towards those who might have complaints or critics on some decision. I.e. the kickoff menu discussion is ended with: "there's been thoroughly user testing", pretty much a dead end to the discussion, but... while this might be true, things that shouldn't be in a menu (favorite aps/places i.e.) are put in a menu... perhaps it's done in the most optimal way to put it in a menu, but did any of the menu designers figured that these things don't belong there in the first place? One can use as much scientific tests as he/she'd like, in the end he'll never get the right answers if he asks himself the wrong questions to begin with.
But well, the coders deside, and luckily there are alternatives, and perhaps the stoneage will save the day.