i think adam made some sage remarks about the shift from kde3 to kde4 and how some view the possible changes with more concern than excitement. and, as adam pointed out, rightfully so: kde3 rocks and a lot of people have come to like how it rocks.
the gauntlet in front of us is to make kde4 better, not just different. to learn from kde3's strengths and its weaknesses. for instance, we can make a better file manager than we have right now. i happen to love konqueror for file management because it does a lot of things well; in particular i love it's remote capabilities (fish:// especially), it's thumbnailing and little things like spring loaded folders and dragging between tabs and split panes. but it also has its issues, such as when you view a file in an embedded viewer ...... how do you switch to edit edit? or with single click, how do you easily and reliably select an icon?
more on the latter point for a moment here as well: Matthias said that maybe single click wasn't such a hot idea. i disagree (and so did people like Raskin, btw). single click is a god send for the average user as it makes the interface more predictable and consistent (not a mish mash of single and double click) and is kinder on the hands. unfortunately, there is that one piece of the interface not designed well for single clicking: the file manager icon.
well, back in march when i was in germany at an appeal project meet up and brought this exact issue up ... with a proposed solution, no less. so, inspired by Matthias' "let's get rid of single click" concept i'm going to spend tomorrow doing up a live example of my proposed solution. then we can all play with it and see what we think.
and i think that's a healthy way to approach these changes. someone notes there's a problem somewhere. i don't want to chuck the baby out with the bathwater, but have to agree there's a problem. so let's try and fix it. more excitement, less fear, right manyoso? =)
oh, and speaking of appeal, we're actually going to unveil the website next week. there was some ball dropping in the last couple of months there, and i've spent some time fixing that today along with some of the others involved. since march appeal had a meet up and it looks like we just might have another one in november. but i want to let everyone see what we've been up to. it's actually kind of anticlimactic, but like many boring but interesting things, there's value to it. anyways.. that's for monday =)
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3 comments:
"kde3 rocks and a lot of people have come to like how it rocks.
the gauntlet in front of us is to make kde4 better, not just different. to learn from kde3's strengths and its weaknesses."
Well said. That's exactly how I feel. I've come from another Operating System when KDE had it's 3.1 release and loved it ever since. It got noticeably better and better with every point release.
Now actually there's more doubt and fear than excitement towards KDE4. A lot of the appeal and plasma stuff sounds neat and cool, but very few things I've seen so far make me feel like "oh, cool, give me that now".
Most things - especially proposals and mockups from kde-artists.org just seem different - better than what was there in KDE3 to some, worse to others... basically just different, but not building upon what's there already.
Radically new concepts might be nice and everything, but since I'm someone who actually likes KDE the way it is, I'm more than unsure if KDE4 will be 'any good' to me...
Oh btw. Konqueror to me is the single-best application KDE has - don't kill it off with the 4.0 release please.
single click is a god send for the average user as it makes the interface more predictable and consistent (not a mish mash of single and double click) and is kinder on the hands. unfortunately, there is that one piece of the interface not designed well for single clicking: the file manager icon.
Well it depends on where you're single-clicking. The vast majority of events on all desktops are actually single clicks. Where it doesn't work is in a file manager, because you want to manipulate files but also run and open them as well. Getting them mixed up is annoying, time consuming and a real problem. Microsoft learned that fairly early on with their file managers.
Mind you, I have seen some people configure even Windows Explorer to single-click, but they really do tend to be power users who know exactly what to expect from it. For just about everyone else, it frustrates the hell out of them. You absolutely have to have a reliable way of selecting an icon and being able to manipulate it first and foremost.
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