Sebastien Biot: KDE Usability - First Steps

Sebastian Biot looks at KDE Usability in the first of a series of studies. "While some participants noted that KDE looked different from Windows, none seemed bothered by the differences and the look-and-feel of KDE. Users identified all the elements of the interface without any trouble including KDE's Konqueror and KMail icons. Most users seemed to understand the K menu's presence and function intuitively and they used it much more than I had anticipated. This test conducted in early July 2002 with four participants outlines of some of KDE 3.0's shortcomings including inconsistencies in KFileDialog and the difficulties of working with Konqueror's embedded viewers." It's good to see people stepping up to do this kind of work -- the good news is that discussion of the study has already been started (kde-usability, kde-cafe).

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Comments

by ruben (not verified)

Thanks for your work, is really important for me and the people in every social organization, that use a free software. We (a LUG) are working to expand linux, and this project is a hot support to do.

Thanks boys and girls.

cheers.

ruben

by Marcus Baker (not verified)

I think the number of configuration options gives a false sense of flexibility.

I would like to do this in KDE...
1) Have folders open without the tree view (it is set to always open a new one).
2) Have the folder window open in the same place and with the same size as the last time I opened that and only that folder (still in the current workspace).
3) the first time I click on a new file type I should be offered ways of associating that file. I almost always want to edit the damn thing, not view it in a next to useless read only Konquerer window. Having to chase down the file associations every time on first use is a real pain.

Both the Mac and OS/2 solved these problems years ago and both allow people to walk up to them and become instantly productive.

Another gripe - if you are going to make the edges of windows so thin at least make them configurable or allow the middle drag of the title bar a'la Gnome.

And could you kidnap the Gnome icon designer...

yours, Marcus.