Colors and UI

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Colors and UI
by - on Wednesday 31/Jan/2007, @15:02

Why must all geeky apps consist of nothing but fluorescent colors? We left the EGA color palette ages ago, so please make an effort not to burn out eyes. Simply turning down the saturation slides might help.? And no, I'm not some artistic type: I'm a programmer and I have a sense of color, simply because I paid attention to it. Do the same, and you'll find people will suddenly not cringe when they see your presentation slides, graphs or flowcharts.

As for kmplot: I have to wonder why almost 2/3rds of the toolbar is dedicated to 3 buttons labeled "coordinate system I/II/III" when literally the only useful element is their icons. The huge buttons would just be as informative without a label (or if you have to add one, how about "Axes" ?), and would be best merged together in a single drop-down or horizontal button group. Or best: provide a simple "+" shaped diagram and let the user toggle each of the axes on or off by clicking them.

Seriously, take some cues from OS X's built-in Grapher application. It's tons easier to use, because it doesn't shove advanced features in your face if all you want to do is plot a graph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Grapherexample.jpg (toolbar hidden)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GrapherToroid.jpg (toolbar visible and in 3D mode)

It has a much simpler layout, and keeps complicated options (such as exact coordinate ranges) away from the main screen using inspectors (aka floating palettes). Graphing applications should make it trivial to make simple doodle graphs and not be too obsessed with exact measurements until you need them. The math entry is transparent... you type things like "e^x" "sin x" "1/x-1" but they get formatted and edited appropriately.

Generally speaking, I think you have a problem if you design a graphing application where only a small part of the window is actually *covered by the graph*. Wasn't KDE4 supposed to be much more usable?

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Re: Colors and UI
by Troy Unrau on Wednesday 31/Jan/2007, @15:30

The toolbar icons can/will change, nevermind the fact that you can disable text in the toolbars anyway. The function of those buttons just adjusts the viewport anyway, not really changing coordinate systems. The actual adjustment when you click the button is pretty slicks - the graph smoothly slides around in the viewport.

Regarding the last line, I resized the window to that point - which is much smaller than my screen. If I had maximized the program, the graph would occupy nearly 80% of the screen space. Just a function of reducing screenshot size for publishing.

Please keep in mind that this is a development version of the program, and that the features going in are still a work in progress. However, if you've ever used KmPlot from KDE 3.x, you'd already understand how much of a huge improvement this is.

And that's really the point of these articles, to show that there is progress happening for KDE 4. Release is still many months away - we probably won't even see a beta until summer, so things can still change greatly.

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Whine away
by Vigilant on Wednesday 31/Jan/2007, @22:41

Someone teach this "programmer" what open software development is.

I'm just fed up with all this people whining and shooting at the developers everytime they show something new. Do you know what open development is? Do you think OSX's Grapher looked like that final version all the while they were developing it?.

The toolbar label issue is something talked about a thousand times already. IT IS NOT FINAL. KDE4 will have HCI guidelines (which are on the works) and we'll see how the usability theme pans out.

Why do this people come here whining all the time?. Or look at Zack's last couple of blog entries. Even when warns he was "just trying to do something visually funky" someone has to complain "and what is the usability case, exactly". Go get a life and stop whining. Ever heard what creativity is?

KDE4 UI has looked much like KDE3 all this time, it is still more than half a year away and developers are still getting the core libraries right. They haven't focused on looks at all yet.

Sorry -, whoever you are. Your first point was valid, but the rest...

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Re: Colors and UI
by Lans on Friday 02/Feb/2007, @04:50

I agree with many of you points. However, as other persons already mentioned, you could have expressed yourself better. The last comment is stupid.

If I were you I would talk to the developers and give suggestions. And not compliance.

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