[Portland] Thoughts on the integration tasks

[Philip Van Hoof]

On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 15:56 -0700, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Thursday 08 December 2005 14:54, Martin Konold wrote:

> > > I guess the problem with the filedialogs is not the way they look, but
> > > the quite different network transparency (VFS) libraries behind them.
> >
> > I thnik both look&feel and functionality matters.
> 
> more importantly, not only will usability people tell you the same but our 
> users (particularly the non-hobyist crowd) have been screaming about this for 
> years.

I think the best we can do here is to let an external organisation
decide about fine tuning the look and feel of the file dialogs. Given
the fact that the look and feel of the file dialog has been a flaming
debate in the GNOME community in the past, I can imagine it'll be a
difficult debate for the desktop environment communities to get things
like "the look and feel of the file dialog" again changed or synch-
ronized.

I'm not sure it's worth debating. Also note that the file dialog means a
lot to the usability of such environments. For example KDE and GNOME
both have their way of guiding the user through his daily desktop
computing tasks. A lot users choose one desktop environment over another
because they prefer that way of desktop computing over the other.

... and that's okay.

I agree with Billy Biggs that the larger issue is the different
underlying VFS layers which have it's differences. They are an obstacle
for the application developer (of ISV's) that want to create a desktop
application that integrates well with all desktop environments. We
should avoid forcing ISV's into a situation where they have to choose
between two large groups of desktop users. We should avoid they have to
choose which group they'll please the most. An ISV typically wants to
target every possible desktop user. And it's silly. And it'll block
adoption of the free desktop initiative.

At this moment, I'm more concerned about such obstacles.

But usability is nevertheless important. But for me it's okay that
there's multiple ways of implementing a usable desktop.


-- 
Philip Van Hoof, software developer at x-tend
home: me at pvanhoof dot be
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org
work: vanhoof at x-tend dot be
http://www.pvanhoof.be - http://www.x-tend.be