KDE Developers and Usability Folks on Cooperation

sultanoslack writes "Over at NewsForge a story just popped up on the usability experts from OpenUsability and some of the issues on working with KDE development teams, specifically the KDE PIM team. There's some interesting content on the different working styles of the two groups as well as a little bit on some of the improvements that were part of the recent KDE 3.4 release."

That's Kooperation

This post made with KFirstPost (TM).

Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

Compiled 12.05.2005. They are customized for my own needs and are not representative.

Promotion as a happy KDE user. Proving that KDE is quite usable for me as is. See it as a gesture of friendly offering from my side. People interested to know how KDE from SVN TRUNK looks like can have a free peek.

Screenshot1 [img99.echo.cx]
Screenshot2 [img102.echo.cx]
Screenshot3 [img99.echo.cx]
Screenshot4 [img241.echo.cx]

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

Are you aware of the fact that you can configure almost every aspect of KDE - including colors, icons, style? Also, KDE doesn't have its own distribution - so it is up to distro makers to change the default look to whatever they like.

...but I am a programmer and user interface designer Yeah, sure, and you have a degree in communication as well I assume? (BLEAH. Positively BLEAH.). (Come on mods, who modded that post interesting?)

Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

"Open Usability - Mission Statement

OpenUsability.org is a project that brings open source developers and usability experts together.

The idea behind is simple: There are many Usability Experts who want to contribute to software projects. And there are many developers who want to make their software more usable, and - as a consequence - more successful. "

I'm going to ask because no one else will. How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

How do you know they're good developers? Who's going to do the vetting?

I think the answer is the same -- good work is evident to others in both cases, even if the observer isn't an expert.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?

Simple. Usability Expert Experts, of course. They in turn are vetted by Expert Expert Experts, who are vetted by me in exchange for cash money or beer. The system is perfect.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

I'm going to ask because no one else will. How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?

Each member [openusability.org] has an "OpenUsability Peer Rating" (borrowed from Advogato [advogato.org]) and a Skills Profile. Not every member takes advantage of this but it seems like a good framework.

Great!

Just wanted to share my excitement about this.

I think it's great that the KDE Devs have no problem acknowledging that KDE could even be better if it focuses more on usability.

Don't get me wrong, KDE is far from the usability nightmare some folks want to make it, however it certainly has issues and it certainly can use some polish. (As can probably any other environment out there for that matter)

Now getting usability expert on board to solve these issues sure is the right way and if KDE 3.4 is anything to judge from, there are great things to come for KDE.

Rock on!

Nice KPilot Screenshot

Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't have the only screenshot on the whole kpilot page making it look like the thing barely works:

KPilot has been reported to cause data loss

Starting KPilot daemon ...
Daemon status is 'not running'

Pilot device /dev/pilot does not exist
Trying to open /dev/pilot
Could not open device /dev/pilot

The thing might work great, but that screeny certainly isn't confidence instilling.

http://pim.kde.org/components/kpilot.php [kde.org]

A little GNOME rant besides.

Before some people start jumping up and mention how great GNOME is and how clean everything is and that they have usability and whatever, better get a look a this screenshot [img234.echo.cx].

As you can see, and I know GNOME people are highly interested to bash this article down to nirvana, you figure out that GNOME itself is far from perfect and needs some huge usability studies on their own.

So comparing KDE with Windows (as some GNOME people did above) will get you nowhere. Before ranting about other Environments start looking on your own shit first. Look at all the different Toolbar types. One with Icons, one with Text below Icons, then another one has drag handles, different sizes of Toolbars etc.

How about working together with GNOME?

Am I the only one who hates the way the whole GNU/Linux community is split up? There are already few apps (with a GUI) compared to Windows applications, if the community keeps splitting up, Linux will never pose a real threat to Windows in the desktop world. Your average PC user doesn't want to have to deal with a different look-and-feel every time he boots an application, so he'll be stuck with the apps that were developed for his desktop environment. Heck, I stick with Kopete because Gaim looks so damned ugly under KDE.

Sure, I have a lot of choices under GNU/Linux. Too bad that for every choice I make I become more and more limited.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

Am I the only one who hates the way the whole GNU/Linux community is split up?

Unfortunately, no, you are not alone with this opinion. What you fail to see is that there developers are not droids. In other words, you can't think of them as a pool that you can shape into whatever form you like. You can't tell a GNOME developer to work for KDE because the latter has a better chance of success (as it seems now). The GNOME developer works on GNOME because that is what he wants to work on. And this is not necessarily a bad thing: competition between the two major desktop environments might be considered as a driving force behind the rapid growth of linux DEs actually.

For instance GNOME and KDE have incompatible aims - they approach usability from different perspectives ("less is more" vs. "more and more, better organized" to put it very simply). On the other hand, standardization of low level services/components might be a good thing, and work is already in progress (albeit I have to admit it is slow) to achieve that via freedesktop.org. Also, you have to be aware of the contradiction of your post: your problem is that there is too much and too few choice at the same time. You'd prefer to use GAIM instead of kopete (you have a choice) but because you choose KDE, you have to use Kopete for a consistent look (no choice). The question you need to ask is this: what is the problem with Kopete? What I'm trying to say is that KDE's application stack becomes more and more complete. They have their own, well integrated office suite (koffice). They have kopete, music players, webbrowser, even a viable gimp replacement for average needs (have you seen krita in koffice 1.4beta? - it is absolutely fascinating!) - and so on.

What needs to be done is to improve that application stack. So if Kopete is not fully satisfactory (you would like to use GAIM, don't you?) - than you should specify the problems. If a number of users agree with your claim - and that's the point of this article - you would be able to communicate your needs/problems to the developers, helping them improve the app you are currently 'forced' to use.

My wish for KDE apps

My wish for KDE applications, in addition to supporting all that the usability guys are doing, is to be able to re-order all icons on the menu bar. It is some what possible now, but in many cases, you fire-up your application and find that the menu bar is disorganized! Re-ordering at this moment becomes impossible! After restarting the app, re-ordering may be possible.

I can think of MS-Office, whose menu bar icons can be re-ordered in any way wanted. When one "squeezes" or forces another menu bar to share the same area with another, this is possible with arrows indicating the availability of other items beyond the arrow.

That's my wish.

/.ers, what's wrong with you?

Usability (intuitiveness and "just works"-ness) is precisely what's keeping Linux from being adopted by the masses.

This is one of the best news I've heard in years.

Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you?

and before people say "but windows sucks too!", linux and the desktop environment have to be a LOT better to win people over.

kioslaves is a major improvement. I plug a drive in, and an icon appears on the desktop. A thing I noticed randomly was if I scroll over the JuK tray icon, it skips to the next song. If I scroll over the speaker tray icon, the volume increases or decreases. When you go to rename a file, it highlights the name but not the extension because you rarely change the extension of a file. These of course are little things, but they do make a difference. There are also countless usability improvements that I can't think of right now.

KDE has come along way since the days of 1.0 and I'm sure the pace is going to increase as more people get involved.

So yeah, KDE is improving and at this pace, it may be a LOT better than windows. Of course that's before longhorn comes out and I'm sure a bunch of people are trying to get linux adoption up before that hype takes over.

Congrats

Hmmm... that's very nice. KDE can learn a lot from the pitfalls GNOME went through in their quest for usability. I'm thinking of the failure to provide facilities to establish communications between developers, users, and usability experts. This was one of the gripes of Eugenia not so long ago (and as much as I hate to admit it, she was right!). It seemed to me that the main problem was that usability changes was decided by fiat - spatial browsing as the default, reverse button order, and a few years ago, the file selector - there was and still is a sense that some of these are 'forced' down the users throat by developers who like to cite their HIG (yet they violate it in the next turn by frustrating user-expectations). Anyway, the sign that KDE is heading towards the right direction is the effort they put into providing a framework with the purpose of faciliating communication between users, experts and developers. What I have in mind is the bugzilla equivalent for usability suggestions/comments that the article mentions.

The work they have done with KDE 3.4 speaks volumes about the success and the potential of these efforts. If you had problems with the 'clutter' of KDE before (I never had I might add) and haven't tried KDE 3.4... you should. And they did it without frustrating their present userbase: no features were removed, they were just reorganized. This seems to be the difference between gnome and kde approach to usability. GNOME seems to have the 'less is more' mantra, while KDE has the 'more, better organized' mantra. Both have its merits btw - I can very well imagine that GNOME's approach suits some user's taste better, so no flames please. Me, I love every feature, and those that I don't use can be easily removed (more easily than in previous KDE iterations).

It is also interesting to see how developers had to be "converted" to cooperate with openusability folks - and it is really nice to hear that this has been a success story so far (11 KDE projects already work closely with openusability - and what's more, they enjoy it :) For instance:

"The reports produced by OpenUsability are, according to Adam, "full of clear, concrete ideas that are well-reasoned, that have an overall vision, and that follow principles. They are also an appropriate length, without being too long or vague."

Nice!

KDE Print

Is it only me who finds that KDE Print just has too many icons, buttons and configuration options? Just take a look at this: http://printing.kde.org/screenshots/ [kde.org]. Without intimately knowing the system/environment you are working at, it might be impossible to setup a printer. It happened to me once...and I am not that much of a newbie. Or is it that I am not that bright?

Re:KDE Print

Seriously, I totally agree with you. I think kprinter actually is a very good example of the problems kde faces. Kprinter is technically an awsome tool if you take the time to really get into it. However the problem is, for simply setting up a local printer it is way to confusing.

No, but your post is a very good example of the problems KDE, Gnome and the rest face, when it comes to adoption by Windows users. If something has a configuration option or two less than Windows does for the same thing, then it's not configurable enough. If it's got a configuration option or two more than Windows does, it's too confusing. I just pulled up the default Windows and vendor provided printer configuration panels on Windows 2k, XP and 98 SE and printer properties in Kprinter for KDE 3.4. Kprinter appears to have just a couple more options than the default Windows equivalent and a couple less than the configuration tools provided by Epson and Canon. The most significant difference I see is a matter of depth. In Kprinter and the Epson tool all the options appear to be presented at the same depth, a handful of tabbed pages in one window, while the Windows and Canon tools have buttons on some pages that open additional windows. The latter have most the same options as the former, they just hide more of them.

KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design

No matter what I say I'll get blasted per usual so here goes, sure kde "seems" more consistent & integrated than gnome but personally it seems like nothing but a windows ui hack, looks just like it dont it? I'm all for choice but after hearing so much about how crappy the win interface is what do we get in kde, same old thing. I use xfce4 exclusively and will never change. Let's hear from some programmers/designers on what constitutes a good albeit (subjective) interface help me bring my karma back to positive!

The real problem lies here

Here's what I did today. I went to CompUSA and bought a 160GB Ultra ATA Drive. I popped open my Mac G4 and installed it. Then I partitioned the drive and installed OSX. Next I installed Ubuntu. Awesome distro and the first time I've ever installed Linux on any machine anywhere. First thing I noticed: the email setup was different from standard practices. Next thing I noticed: Open menus and screens left trails on the monitor. Third thing: Gimp locked and the usual keyboard combinations to force quite didn't work. What I'm trying to say is STANDARDIZE, STANDARDIZE, STANDARDIZE! Take a class in consumer behavior for once in your lives! The user experience in Linux doesn't have to match the Mac or Windows experience, but atleast go for some sort of intuitive commonality.

Bugs, bugs, bugs

The *first* thing these teams need to do is fix bugs! I've never seen a bug-free installation of any flavor of Linux (assuming the installation works at all), and most of those bugs are GUI related. Usability should be right up there, but after bug fixes. Personally, I think that the KDE and Gnome teams should work on 1. Fixing bugs 2. Usability and THEN 3. New features. Usability isn't particulaly useful if the basics still don't work properly.

Gnome has better apps

I'm really a KDE fan, for the most part. Gnome does have its strengths, though -- like, the gnome panel is more flexible and robust, and gapplets seem a better concept than the system tray. But KDE is far more integrated and feature-rich, by light-years. However, Gnome's strength is in the apps that run on GTK: Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, Evolution, Beagle, OpenOffice, Eclipse, and well -- Gnome's games kick the shit out of KDE's shoddy selection. Why do developers choose to write these great apps with GTK instead of QT? I'm not familiar with GUI development on Linux, so could someone who maybe is familar with both toolkits enlighten me? Also, is there performance loss when running GTK apps under KDE? Is there extra load to have widgets from both toolkits running? Thanks!

IMHO KDE is superior compared to Windows except...

for two things, which I really wish to see improved (disclaimer: I still use 3.3 since that's the latest stable one in Gentoo, so I apologize in advance if these have been improved in 3.4):

(1) Why on earth do icons have to be rearranged whenever a Window is minimized or resized!? I consider it affecting file management a lot - I really wish I could put icons into groups in one window, then minimize that and still have them grouped when I maximize it again (e.g. after having minimized it to open another folder from the Desktop).

(2) Please have an option to only allow one window with the same path to be open at one time - i.e. maximize/bring to front the window which is already opened from that folder instead of opening a new one. I know that some people want to have several windows from the same folder opened if they have many files in the same folder (and should have that option) but I really hate it when only part of the path name is shown and I thus I either have to look through several minimized windows in Kicker (if I have several subfolders with the same name) or open a folder again even though I know that I already have it open in another window to get the right one (getting an even more filled Kicker).

Other than those two complaints I consider KDE much better than Windows in terms of usability - I consider the configuration possibilities much more logical: Everything can be configured through Control Center or any specific thing by right-clicking wherever that specific thing is (such as with what application to open which file etc.). Windows is ridiculous - I cannot understand what people at MS have been thinking when they've put some configuration options in the Control Panel and others in Folder Options.

It pays off

KPDF has seen such major improvements in usability in 3.4 that I was amazed, it is one of the best if not the best PDF readers in existence currently. Adobe could learn a lesson from KPDF. I really hope they wont follow the same approach as Gnome, just dumbing everything down and leaving the users who really need features like SCP over VFS, Tabbing and Splitting in Konqueror etc.. standing in the rain. But so far it looks very good. They did not dumb anything down, but understood usability to make a better ui but leave the power functions in (which can be locked out via kiosk if needed) One of the biggest problems Gnome had, was that they went the usability for idiots way and left their main base, which mostly are power users standing in the rain, the way, we take it out you will never have it in again.

The last people

on earth who should be designing user interfaces are developers. Because we already know the answers we often assume we know the questions. We're constrained by widgets, HUI Guidlines, and a knowledge of how the underlying framework works and, almost by definition, we think differently to our end users.

We desperately need a 'language' or F/OSS IDE that an art/psycology grad can get to handle with little or no training that allows them to be as expressive as photoshop or dreamweaver and yet know no code.

Congrats to KDE. This has got to be a step in the right direction.

usability - ok, but with care

I don't mind if someone, anyone, everyone or noone wants KDE focusing more on usabilty issues (although my currently configured KDE desktop is the best desktop I've ever used), just please promise me something: please don't let any of the Gnome HIG people around. I don't want no more desktop4dumbs around.

Re:K!!

gmean glike gnome gapplications ior iapple iapplications "microsoft or" "microsoft microsoft" "microsoft applications"?

openperhaps openyou openmean openlike openbsd's openapps.

Re:kde tooltips - got to go

maybe they will get rid of those huge tooltips when you mouse over the links on the panel

The ones that sometimes decide stay there forever even after you move the mouse, until you bring up another tooltip? What's up with that?

Re:kde tooltips - got to go

great. maybe they will get rid of those huge tooltips when you mouse over the links on the panel

Right-click the panel, select configure, in layout click on appearance and uncheck show tooltips and you won't see them anymore.

Re:Linux usability programmers?

I still cannot see a single place that I can remove software that I install.

K menu --> System -- Package Manager

The task panel still not resizable using the mouse. And when you resize, the icons get larger (what good is that?)

Resizing the task bar is not something the average user does every day. Once in a great while is more like it. I have *never* tried to resize it with my mouse, simply because I never resize the taskbar. The taskbar in KDE has a dozen more customization options than in Windows, so use the Settings menu.

When install softwares, most of the times, I still have to find out where the heck it went to (which directory). Why don't they all make an entry in the menu like the M$ does.

There is a Filesystem Heirarchy Standard (FHS) that explains where all files on a compliant system belong. Not all software is 100% compliant, but then again it isn't on Windows, either. Check the Package Manager and it'll tell you where all the individual files are. Also, this isn't something that users should really concern themselves with. Let the system handle it.

There's so many other problems. For example, first click on the address bar of firefox in windows would highlight it, so I just type in new address. In Linux, that just put a cursor there.

You're right, and this should never change! You forget this is *NIX and not Windows. When you highlight something like that, it is copying it to the clipboard. If I highlight a URL in a different document and want to paste it into the Firefox URL window, under your system I'm hosed because clicking in the window highlighted the existing URL and blew away my clipboard.

I am not sure about the latest Linux version, but Mandrake 10.01, or RH E3, I can't find the tool bar for folders to go up, next, previous.

Uh, in the file manager? Konqueror in KDE, places those as the first three buttons...

In the early days, I heard Linux uses little memory, swap algorithm are good, but when I use it, boy, with little memory, it's slow to a crawl (when I ran Websphere on 256 M machine). With a very fast machine, it still takes along time to start up. And applications still take a long time to start up.

It depends on what you do. Systems can be tweaked to boot in a few seconds in many cases, and RAM depends on the eye candy. Application startup time varies, and KDE 3.4 is the fasted KDE yet. AbiWord (non-KDE) loads in 4 seconds on my 750 MHz P3 (first time) and reloads in under 3.

-Charles

Re:Linux usability programmers?

To check where are files located do:
dpkg -L packagename
To uninstall everything that package installed on your systemd do:
apt-get remove --purge packagename
as far as click is concerned, you might wanna try Ctrl-L in firefox.
If you don't know, then that doesn't mean that system is stupid, but rather it is other way round..

cheers
bin
look siG is kool