KDE Traffic #68 is Out

KDE Traffic #68 has been released, covering topics ranging from toolbars (1, 2), KMail and Kontact fun, to a change in the KDE 3.2 release schedule. Enjoy!

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Comments

by Joe Schmoe (not verified)

James,

Why do you think that you *need* to have an opinion here? We weren't all waiting around, hoping that you had your answer soon, or else the conversation couldn't go anywhere. "Oh boy, I hope James tells us what he thinks soon, this coffee is getting cold."

Defaults matter. Defaults are used by people who don't know what "Defaults" are, and probably think someone is referring to "the problems".

For me, and most "average" people I know (I am not including myself in there, but I know the type), your toolbars are confusing and look like dog poop. There are no labels, so people come down to saying "Which blob with the blue arrow sends a reply back to grandma?"

Come on, give me a break. Ditch the lame ass "Print this frame" buttons, and ditch your (James') tiny icon schemes (yes, James, we know you're super-elite and know what the buttons mean), but you highlight the very fact that you probably shouldn't be in this conversation. If you know how to change them, then do. If you don't, then you are going to be looking for the best way to know your ass from your elbow. Do you really think 20 different icons are really the best way to confront a new user?

Give me a break.

Joe

To sum up, ditch everything, go through a trial run with a normal user to see what buttons she needs, then make it REALLY clear how to add new buttons. Keep it clean and "usable".

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

PLEASE! give us all a break. If you have nothing to contribute, then don't go looking for things to misunderstand so that you can write a useless diatribe denigrating them.

Your comments on my arrangement are irrelevant because they do not address my point.

You said: "There are no labels", but that is the current KDE default. So, please go insult who ever was responsible for that decision.

My point was to rearrange the icons so that the commonly used ones were more accessable. I did not add or remove any icons except for the word: 'Location'. That is a separate issue.

If you have an intelligent comment on that, please make it.

Now, there is a legitimate issue buried between the lines in your rant.

It is the question of novice vs. expert users. There was a paper on this in Science which I think applies to the GUI of a computer. There *is* a difference of kind, not degree, between novices and experts.

Novices do need some hand holding to start with. But, there is a disadvantage to a GUI that has too much hand holding -- this has been a legitimate criticism of the Mac (and the mouse in general) -- that it prevents users from ever taking the step to being expert users. The result of this is low productivity.

I have no objection to the default being to have "Text under icons" on what is the: "Location" tool bar on my schema. But, there are currently two problems with this. They need to be single words and they need to use a smaller type size (perferably condensed). Otherwise they take up too much screen space.

Perhaps a better solution would be to move some of the icons from the: "Main toolbar" to the "Extra toolbar" so it looks like IE 5.5 if you don't have the: "Extra toolbar" (which should be the default).

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JRT

by Rayiner H. (not verified)

I *do* think that changing the defaults would be a major improvement. So far, four people in this thread have posted screenshots to how they've modified their defaults for Konq. Clearly, the default layout is not exactly pleasing for a lot of people. Also, it would be nice for the icon-text mode to be usable. Having the text there not only helps new users who don't who what the icons stand for, but also helps non-visual users (like me :) who can never remember that they stand for. True, you can fix all this now, because of KDE's configurable toolbars, but doing that manually to each app is just a pain.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I noticed some similarity in the four posted suggestions. I admit to copying Mozilla. I suppose that there are also those that would like to copy IE.

In any case, I am posting a fifth idea. Note that this is NOT possible with the current code. It requires adding an additional tool bar and permanantly attaching the: "Animated Logo" to the: "Menubar" which shouldn't be major changes.

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JRT

by Datschge (not verified)

> Ability to choose the font for the toolbar icons.

That's already there for some time, look no further than
Control Center -> Appearance & Themes -> Fonts -> Toolbar

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I probably could have gone into more detail about this.

Yes, you can set it globally, but this doesn't quite solve the problem with Konqueror. You need to be able to set it individually for each toolbar. Specifically, if you choose a small font for under the icons in the main toolbar, it also changes your Bookmark tool bar where you want a larger font.

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JRT

by Joe Schmoe (not verified)

That you've filed on this issue. I'll give it my vote if you keep the description terse. Can't have you rambling on forever.

by Paul Eggleton (not verified)

Without having tried KDE 3.2 beta, do the toolbars in 3.2 support resetting the toolbar layout to the default? This would be useful if you've messed up the layout and want to start from scratch.

by Datschge (not verified)

Usually renaming ~/.kde/share/apps//.rc does that for me.

by Paul Eggleton (not verified)

Yeah, that'll work, but it isn't that great from a usability perspective.

by Datschge (not verified)

I thought you were asking whether the technical possibility is there so I answered that way. If your point was that the 'configure toolbars' dialogs should have a 'defaults' button like most other setting dialogs seem to have I even fully agree, but you should also clearly state your point that way then. =P

by OI (not verified)

This might help the KOffice guys with ms office compatibility.

http://isb.oio.dk/info/news/wordml+published.htm

by gerd (not verified)
by gerd (not verified)

KMAIL:

- find message is important
- a forward button is imho needed

by Till Adam (not verified)

Do you mean "kmail's find message dialog is important" or "kmail needs ot be able to search for important messages"? The later will be possible in kde 3.2. And there is a forward button. Even two, one for attachment, one for inline. All you have to do is add it to the toolbar.

by anon (not verified)

To quote from the SUSE post:
"Today and tomorrow, we must be strongly committed to deliver what our customers ask us for."

Exactly. And this is why I have sent them an e-mail with regard to their KDE support since I paid them quite a bit of money to have my group switch to SUSE Linux desktop (over Red Hat as the system administrator wanted). Our decision was mainly influenced by SUSE's KDE integration which is (at least in my opinion) leaps and bounds above anything Ximian Gnome has to offer. I don't mind getting the Ximian improvements to Gnome included in SUSE, but if NOVELL/SUSE decides to pour only resources into GNOME, then I may just as well use Red Hat in the future.

And since we are just discussing implementing a Linux cluster with 64 dual-processor machines, they may loose out on that contract as well if they decide to retain KDE as their main environment.

I just hope that other customers will also write to them.

by anon (not verified)

The second to last paragrpah should have read:

And since we are just discussing implementing a Linux cluster with 64 dual-processor machines, they may loose out on that contract as well if they decide to NOT retain KDE as their main environment.