[ghns] GHNS Rant

[Luke Alan Sandell]

Here are some criticisms I have against GHNS. I was going to post it on 
Bugzilla, but it was too general. Please take with a grain of salt (or 
alternatively, several glasses of wine). I am also not subscribed to the 
list, so if you could kindly CC any replies.

The GHNS dialog is a usability nightmare, and should probably be altogether 
eliminated in favor of a web-based interface. The only feedback the user 
receives while everything is loading is the message "Empty Page" and 
multiple, ugly, KIO progress dialogs. Then there is the HUGE kcmshell-like 
list box on the far left that normally only contains a single item. The 
various tabs for "Highest Rated", "Latest", and "Most Downloaded" contain the 
same exact content 99% of the time (forgive me for never having taken a class 
in HCI, but at least in my book using "tabs" to switch between identical 
pages having different content is a big "no-no" and a pet peeve of mine. The 
whole idea behind tabs is you are switching between _different_ pages; simply 
changing the content of the page destroys the whole tab metaphor. Radio 
buttons would probably be better in this case). Then there is the tiny 
preview window at right. You can't click on the preview of wallpaper, for 
example, to view it at full size in a separate window before you decide to 
install it. And then Details button pops up this HUGE plain-text dialog box, 
instead of a nice scrollable rich-text view as it should.

Why reinvent the wheel or confine yourself to clunky static interfaces like 
this when all this dynamic, web-based technology is at your fingertips? If 
the user clicks on "Get Hot New Stuff" in an application, they should simply 
be taken to a site such as kde-look.org where they can browse content in a 
manner they see fit. Then (and here is the hook), they should be able to 
click on a universal "Install" button on the page that will automatically 
install the content for them and notify interested applications. This would 
be done using a special XML mimetype that will be recognized by Konqueror and 
will cause a GHNS helper program to be launced, which will of course check a 
configurable list to make sure the resource comes a trusted site. Users 
shouldn't need to manually download things into to their hidden KDE home - 
even as a power user I find this to be a tedious and braindead proceedure. 
And of course they shouldn't have to choose between different sizes of 
wallpapers, as ordinary users have no reason to know their display resolution 
anyway. The different files available for different resolutions should be 
listed in the XML file, and GHNS should simply pick the right one for the 
user's display. Also, the user should be able to choose between using the 
resource immediately (as in setting it as the active wallpaper), or 
downloading it for later use.

Now, why would I want an application that could download only content that is 
"hot" or "new?" Why not allow me to browse all the content arranged in any 
way I choose? The other day I trying to retrieve the Liquid Weather theme for 
SuperKaramba, but I was not allowed to because it is apparently not "hot" or 
"new" enough to appear in the GHNS dialog (I was under the mistaken 
impression that Liquid Weather was among the most popular, eg. "hot", themes. 
Apparently its position is rivaled by such world-changers as the About.com 
Search).

Community-based content distribution is one way in which free desktops can 
always excel in comparison to their commercial counterparts, for reasons that 
are so obvious that I need not mention here. It is one of those tantalizing 
technologies that would be so nice if it actually worked.

Sincerely,
Luke Sandell