KDE Developers and Usability Folks on Cooperation 218
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 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:That's Kooperation (Score:2, Funny)
I noticed that KFirstPost(TM) uses code from KFlamebait(TM) and KTroll(TM), which are both GPL'ed. Now that's Kooperation!
Re:That's Kooperation (Score:1)
Dang, kan I get that for my system? I'm only running 3.3....
Seriously, though, I love to hear these things...
KDE IS KOOL!
Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2, Interesting)
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 (Score:1, Interesting)
BLEAH. Positively BLEAH. Compared to regular Windows, it's more chromey, more toyish...the equivelent of eating ballpark sushi. Honestly, after a total of 3.4 versions, can't you usability rebels possibly come up with some good ideas, or at least copy some? User Interface is like enlightenment...you have to commit me
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:1, Insightful)
Now that's new, different, powerful, and I can't wait until its done.
Raydude
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
I used to use Enlightenment back in the day (and loved it) and even looked into helping out on the E17 effort several years ago. The problem is that they are a VERY tight nit group of developers and the way they completely throw out portions of their code (including core libraries) and refactor them at will makes it REALLY tough to get into the code.
I am not trying to put them down in any way. They are doing awesome work... just doing it slowly
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2, Insightful)
I saw a hack once for MacOS X Cocoa that allowed you to hold down some modifier keys and drag buttons around in an app to really reorganize them. In fact you could drag them to another application and put them there, or to a floating toolbar or a menu. That's the beginning step of user interface customization.
That kind of functionality may be cool for a geek who knows what he's doing, but it's a total nightmare from the helpdesk point of view. I don't think that this enhances usability at all. On the co
Re:I agree (Score:2, Insightful)
How would people that have problems with vision set a High-Contrast color-scheme? Or do you want to have everyone use one so that some 5% of all people cann see better?
How would blind people interact with your perfect immersive environments, without telling the environment so? How would deaf people who cannot hear sound notification tell the environment that?
Sorry, while your comment is true in that config options are not a solution to most usability problems, the absolut you use is not qui
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
on second thought: maybe I took your post too seriously, but then, a f
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
There's generic icons -- lots of them -- hardly any space for the task part of the taskbar (FADING IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR A USELESS, IF SOMEWHAT PRETTY, TASKBAR!), the weird bottom arrow for the scrollbar is confusing (I'll move my mouse to the top or use my mousewheel, thank you), and there's a bunc
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
And how is KDE anything except consistent?? Practically everything is a part of the core KDE packages, and they're very well integrated. Gnome pales in comparison!
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:3, Informative)
The screenshots do not show the default desktop, it show how this particular user has set up his desktop. So it merely shows that you can customize KDE to your exact liking. And I don't see how that is a "failing of open source".
FWIW, my KDE-desktop looks like this [www.nbl.fi]. Quite a difference, no?
Please: if you want to complain about KDE, do not use some heavily modified desktop as your basi
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
So while I could save
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
I didn't start to appreciate KDE's flexibility until I made my custom panel layout, which, as I said, was very similar to yours. There are a few differences (the biggest one being that my side panel was top-aligned, not bottom-aligned), but the basic idea is the same.
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
Seems like it's just me but I don't like the way KDE orders the tasks when there's more than one row- from top to bottom, then only left to right.
I prefer the windows style - left to right, then top to bottom.
With MS Window's style when I close/remove a task, the tasks to the right do not all get shuffled vertically, only the leftmost and rightmost tasks are affected.
With KDE, ALL tasks to the right of the removed tasks end up on a diffent row. IMO that's bad useability.
So I submi
Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK (Score:2)
Ignore the expert behind the curtain. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Funny)
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. (Score:2)
Usability expert. N. Person determined to annoy the hell of a programmer if the tiniest detail in the user interface appears to SLIGHTLY bother him.
Adj. "RTFM killer."
Adj. "Joe User" to the Nth power.
Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain. (Score:2)
So, I guess a usability expert can prove he's a usability expert by proving the ideas he proposes
Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain. (Score:2)
Important Note: This portal is under construction. It is not finished, some functionality is missing, and it does not yet meet our usability standards.
So, the usability experts can't make their own website usable but they're going to tell KDE what to do?
If you're a KDE developer, I've got some land in Florida you may be interested in...
Great! (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Re:Great! (Score:3, Insightful)
KDE has the configuration console, although it has become much better with the new icon view mode which basically cleans some a major point (option clutter in the tre
Re:Great! (Score:3, Funny)
it certainly can use some polish
No way! It's unusable enough in English!
Nice KPilot Screenshot (Score:2, Insightful)
KPilot has been reported to cause data loss
Starting KPilot daemon
Daemon status is 'not running'
Pilot device
Trying to open
Could not open device
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. (Score:1, Informative)
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 l
Re:A little GNOME rant besides. (Score:1, Insightful)
both GNOME and KDE suck big fat balls when it comes to the user experience.
Re:A little GNOME rant besides. (Score:1, Insightful)
You should take note of several things about that screenshot.
First, EasyTAG isn't a Gnome app, it's a GTK app. It doesn't use the GStreamer framework, or GnomeVFS, or GnomeUI, or GConf, so including it is incorrect.
Similarly for Abiword, that project has consistancy across platforms as a goal, and is also not a gnome project. It does go reasonably out of it's way to play nice with a Gnome environment, however. It should also be pointed out that the toolbar requirem
Re:A little GNOME rant besides. (Score:2)
Well, that's a pretty fucking stupid goal. Rather than make a bunch of custom objects and custom code that warps the program's interface to a "non-platform look" (and opens the door for more bugs, code bloat, etc) why not just let it look like it belongs on the platform its running on. After all, the person chose the platform for a reason. Maybe he or she actually LIKES the platforms' native look.
(yeah - I think swing was also a fuckup for the sam
Re:A little GNOME rant besides. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A little GNOME rant besides. (Score:2)
How about working together with GNOME? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:2)
I like software that doesn't suck. I don't care about threatening windows, bec
Re:How about working together with GNOME? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:How about working together with GNOME? (Score:2)
This is distinctly different from Windows where, having chosen my DE (lets just call it that) I then have a *very* wide range of apps to choose from all fitting in well with the look and feel (etc) of the enviroment.
Maybe I interpreted you wrong
Re:How about working together with GNOME? (Score:2)
Re:How about working together with GNOME? (Score:3, Insightful)
The trouble with this kind of assessment is that not everyone in "the community" cares if Linux poses a threat to Windows. They just want to build what they think is great software.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How about working together with GNOME? (Score:1)
Unfortunately, a theme engine that imitates widget appearance does not automatically result in desktop integration. In fact, having applications that appear on the surface to be similar, but actually behave differently, have different menu structures etc. is even more confusing for users (myself included) than applications that share no visual features.
As for using Windows as a benchmark for consistency, I think you'r
Re:How about working together with GNOME? (Score:2)
Re:How about working together with GNOME? (Score:2)
Yes... In fact, I can get that with Gtk+.
My wish for KDE apps (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:My wish for KDE apps (Score:2)
File at bugs.kde.org
/.ers, what's wrong with you? (Score:5, Informative)
This is one of the best news I've heard in years.
Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you? (Score:2, Funny)
You really mean:
"Microsoft's monopoly power/software patents/SCO/Darl/Anti-open source zealots are precisely what's keeping Linux from being adopted by the masses."
Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you? (Score:2)
Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you? (Score:2)
First hand account... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:First hand account... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:First hand account... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not saying they should or they shouldn't: But that attitude is why the usability on Linux is so bad.
Re:First hand account... (Score:2)
Re:First hand account... (Score:2)
Sortof like how I don't expect Win3.1 and Win9* to behave alike, other than in the most broadly used functions (like copy and paste, ALT-F4 to close apps, etc). But I do expect the desktop and apps *within each OS* to behave consistently, so I'm not unexpect
Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you? (Score:2)
Compare the different growth they had in user market share while KDE wasnt helped by usability experts and gnome was.
Oh! Wait
Congrats (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:KDE Print (Score:2)
Re:KDE Print (Score:3, Interesting)
In the top area, there is a preview checkbox. Presumably this means print preview. But why is it in the printer control group? Is it previewing the printer? Why is
You're not far off it. (Score:2)
Maybe not, but give yourself a little credit, you're close. You already have a big mouth of cause, but don't we all when we get onto a forum. Your ability and willingness to disguise opinions as facts is also showing great promise, with a little work it could be up to professional standards. I also see in you the ability to make it seem that your personal opinions about different things is actually well thought out and objectively reasoned design rules, this is always an impor
Re:KDE Print (Score:2)
You show the already expanded version. (And afaik it's not KDE 3.4 either. Seems like the screens are outdated)
Most of your "problems" sounds like minor nitpicking of someone desperate to find faults or someone who has never even used the program but finds that he can't figure out a complex tool (ais, it's the advanced dialog and the printing subsystem is complex on all systems) by just looking at a screenshot. The one problem you mentioned that I can agree with
Re:KDE Print (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:KDE Print (Score:2)
Your comment reminds me of an anecdote from a usability conference, where the GUI guy met with the programmer who said "look, here, I made it extra
Re:KDE Print (Score:2)
Well yes, I agree, but only on a very broad basis: if you go from our primitive printer scenario all the way forward to being able to just tell your computer what you want and let the poor beast sort it out for himself. Have that sucker deal with its own programming and us just going "I don't care if it's complicated, print that paper now!" That would be very cool indeed.
But meanwhile we're stuck with a mouse and a keyboard on one side and the ma
KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design (Score:1)
Let's think about "them" (the OSS programmers) for a second. Obviously, they're copying Windows. Obviously they are NOT producing consumer products for sale. And obviously they are NOT trying to somehow jump past Windows into the new paradigm.
I would say that they're doing something quite different and interesting: they're purging Windows from their souls. Like when a veteran visits Io Jima. To sum
Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design (Score:3, Insightful)
"...sure xfce4 "seems" more consistent & integrated than kde but personally it seems like nothing but a Mac OS X ui hack, looks just like it dont it? I'm all for choice but after hearing so much about how crappy the Mac interface is what do we get in xfce4, same old thing. I use kde exclusively and will never change..."
- just pointing out what has to be said: there's only so many ways to go in UI without a radical redesign of the computing world in general, and either you're going to loo
Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design (Score:2)
Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design (Score:2)
What you seem to be thinking is that KDE should be different from Windows for the sole reason of being different. If it has some similarities to the way Windows works (all GUI's look more or less similar), it's automatically a bad thing. You don't
Re:KDE, Usability & Intelligent Design (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you comparing it to? I have worked on a lot of large object oriented code bases (my day job is maintaining a LARGE finite-element code written in C++) and working in KDE is atleast an order of magnitude better than any large piece of code I can think of.
There are very well laid out docs that describe the core pieces of the system and tie it all together with the Qt heritage. The inheritance trees is KDE are very good... with just the right amount of inherit and extend mixed in w
The real problem lies here (Score:2)
Bugs, bugs, bugs (Score:2)
Re:Bugs, bugs, bugs (Score:2)
Apple is a good example, their point releases fix the bugs but the apps are useable from day one.
To get there, the priority list should be:
1. Usability
2. Testing
3. Bug fixing
4. New features
Gnome has better apps (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
My problem with the Qt toolkit is about TrollTech and their dual license. The GNOME platform is far more free as beer and freedom goes. KDE is restricted to either GPL applications or TrollTech licensed applications, and quite honestly, I see no reason to give TrollTech that type of control over the platform I would chose to work on...
Fortunately, I don't even like the KDE desktop and platform in the first place, so this is a win-win i
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
In shor
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
How about this.... If you force people to pay money to make software based on what is touted as a free software platform, you are in the wrong line of culture.
"Why whine about Qt/TT?"
Because the grandparent asked for my point of view, and because there's way too many irrational KDE cheerleaders on Slashdot that take every oppritunity to protect their platform and
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
I'm sorry to tell you this, but.... That's the way it works in just about ALL GPL-based software! You can't take GPL'ed software and start selling it in a way Microsoft does for example. And last time I checked, most software on Linux seems to be GPL'ed.
Of course you are free to do as you please. Feel free to NOT use Qt (as you have done). No-one
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
"Do as I say! Not as I do!". Just how hypocritical can people be?
Hypocrite? Geez... of all the words to pick.
Either you are stupid or forgetful. [rahga.com] I don't care which.
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
Yes, the word I used was "hypocritical". Reason being that people like you whined when Qt wasn't free software. And now you whine when they licensed it under the GPL, and that means that it requires you to license your code under the GPL as well. So you guys kept on insisting that Qt must be free software. But when Qt insists (through it's license) that your software must be free
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
The thing is, I'm not being a hypocrite. Though I've only got my name to one ChangeLog entry in Gtk+, I'm more than happy to see people use Gtk+ in non-free software. I want everyone to be able to use the toolkits and libraries I use and occassionally fix bugs on, not just the people who want to develop free software. RMS and GNU use the term "lesser" because of the non-viral freedom, but personally, I think it's far more free.
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
And Qt is widely used in non-free software, so I fail to see the point. It merely encourages people to write GPL'ed software, and that is a good thing in my book.
Starting with Qt4, it will be GPL'ed in Windows as well, so it will encourage people to write ree software for Windows as well. Again: a good thing, IMO. But you CAN still ue it for commercial apps if you so desire. But you have to pay for Qt one way or the other: either through so
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
Gaim and Evolution have very good counterparts at Kopete and Kontact.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Eclipse a Java application?
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:2)
Before, everyone used XMMS for their music. Then we got Juk and Amarok, both kick-ass apps. Gnome had Evolution for their PIM, while KDE has nothing. Then we got Kontact. CD-Burning? K3B, the best app of it's kind on Linux. Editors? Kate. Konqueror got really good really fast. Ther
Re:Gnome has better apps (Score:3, Informative)
Paul.
It pays off (Score:3, Insightful)
usability - ok, but with care (Score:2)
Re:K!! (Score:5, Funny)
openperhaps openyou openmean openlike openbsd's openapps.
Re:kde tooltips - got to go (Score:1)
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 (Score:2)
On a side note, has anyone else had a problem with KDE 3.4 where when you download something to your desktop (firefox, mozilla and konquerer do this.. haven't checked others) no icon appears? You can go to your desktop from a CLI and the file is there, but refreshing the desktop etc... does not help it to appear? I have found the only way to get
Re:kde tooltips - got to go (Score:1)
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:kde tooltips - got to go (Score:2)
leaving 'show tooltips' on allows things to show that tiny yellow box with the description text in it, instead of the giant bubble that fades in.
Andrew
Re:kde tooltips - got to go (Score:1)
Re:Linux usability programmers? (Score:3, Informative)
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 Windo
Re:Linux usability programmers? (Score:2)
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 highlig
Re:The last people (Score:2)
Buy/steal a mac (refurb, mini, ebay) and download the free developer tools at the Apple developers website.
Now download the Human Interface Guidelines from Apple (as a reference, not a Bible).
And start building an interface with Interface Builder. It's the fastest prototyper around, barring paper and pencil (also a Great Idea, paper and pencil will help you out every time...)
You can make use of screenshots and HTML if you want to make a cross platform prototype.
Not that you'll be