Tuesday, we reported that the KDE project had released the first beta of KDE 4.1, the release that is supposed to be ready to replace KDE3 on normal users' desktops. The information and marketing speak in the press release sure was promising, so Ars decided to take the KDE 4.1 beta out for a spin.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-11-21
Better be careful. If you slaughter on KDE too much you will be categorized as a hater and elitist.
Then of course people will proclaim this is all for free when it's all for building a resume, job hunting and creating career paths while corporations leverage and use these programmers to get work done.
What is clear to me is that the Keith Ohlfs of the world are few and far between. They understand minimalism and separation of concerns you can't explain from a curriculum or certificate programs.
It's an eye for balance that is desperately being ignored in KDE, GNOME, OS X and Windows.
Keith should have said f*** it and taken the lead GUI job back at Apple when us NeXT folks merged. I guess he thought Microsoft would continue to be a huge stock leader--his main reason was oh so many stock options at the time unvested.
He'd be worth more at Apple and we wouldn't have such aborrations across the industry.
UI design is becoming obese, redundant and clearly obsessed with making a collection of actions for every possible keyboard equivalent visible in the Mouse driven UIs.
Member since:2005-07-07
Is it just me or did we get happy with our up/down right/left arrows to the point that every textfield has one whether it needs it or not
Those aren't textfields but comboboxes or drop-down selections. It is quite customary on all platforms and widget styles to use an arrow to hint at this drop down option.
Member since:2006-02-15
Those aren't textfields but comboboxes or drop-down selections. It is quite customary on all platforms and widget styles to use an arrow to hint at this drop down option.
I think he is talking about the ugly and stupid looking group of 4 arrows in the bottom right corner. I have to agree with him, it looks very silly. Either add the arrow at both ends of the scrollbar, or both arrows at either end. Not both solutions.
Oh, and as a sidenote...I seriously, seriously hate that panel. It's way too big, and black is such a horrible color. I am planning to try KDE 4.1 out when I get it installed but I will definitely change that panel immediately.
Member since:2006-01-01
You realize it was rendering to a screen that was 800x600? You also realize that if any other Desktop OS were rendered like that these days it'd also look huge? Windows using the classic theme probably being the exception. Then again I can make the panel smaller... and it looks nice on a big screen as it is.
Then again, you don't even really need a panel in kde4. Its not a requirement. You don't have to have it. You could even go write your own in javascript if you wanted if you feel like its that crappy. Instead all I see is the usual whine drones.
I have a feeling you've never actually bothered using it (the beta) but just had to throw your two cents in as usual.
Listen, if your going to criticize something people have put years of effort on it would at least be kind to try it, have an open mind about it, and be a little more descriptive then "its fugly."
Its not very hard btw to make or grab a new theme. The default was always programmer art from what I recall. At least for plasma.
Member since:2006-05-30
Why should they? You can tell if a UI sucks with a quick glance in most cases. The amount of effort put into making it does nothing to guarantee it won't be crap, especially if the defining vision involves bad ideas.
IMO, in KDE's case, the main bad idea is to just play catchup with OSX and Vista.
Member since:2006-06-30
Member since:
2005-11-21
And what is with all the wasted space in the window borders and such?
ew.
This especially:
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/scaled/...
Is it just me or did we get happy with our up/down right/left arrows to the point that every textfield has one whether it needs it or not and the scrolling needs it on both ends.
Add the fat footer it really looks bad.