[TriLUG] redhat-config-network question

[Ilan Volow]

On 27 Feb 2003 10:36:28 -0500
Brent Fox <bfox at linuxheadquarters.com> wrote:

map.  I don't
> think that will pull in all of Gnome, however.
> 
> > And with every 
> > new Red Hat release I like it less and less.  I prefer KDE.  And not
> > an adulterated KDE that has been spliced profusely with Gnome DNA.  
> 
> This is only my opinion and I don't mean to flame anyone, but it seems
> to me that to argue against unifying the look of Gnome and KDE is to
> argue against the concept of consistency.  Consistency is a good
> thing. We had to make some changes to achieve that consistency, but
> that is not adulteration.
> 
> In all honesty, we made just as many changes (if not, more) to Gnome
> for 8.0 as we did to KDE.  We get bashed for not giving KDE enough
> attention, then we get bashed for making too many improvements.  
> 
> Some things should be the same in both Gnome and KDE.  I think time
> will show that this is the right strategy.  The work that both KDE and
> Gnome developers are doing on freedesktop.org will help make this
> happen. Window manager hints should be the same...fonts should be
> rendered the same way...startup notification should work the same way.
>  It only makes
> sense.
> 

Before I'm ascribed to one camp or another for anything I say in this
message, I'll just say I'm not a KDE zealot. Or a GNOME zealot. I'm a
usability zealot. Sort of like Dilbert's "I'm not anti-business, just
anti-stupidity". While LUG's tend to be devoid of people with human
factors backgrounds (it's kind of hard to fit into a group where most
people get their jollies setting up apache and MySQL and configuring
networks when you're interested in what confuses non-geeks and how fast
they can hit a visual target with a mouse), we do exist. 


Regarding BlueCurve: Consistency is important. But just because you make
something look consistent with something else does not mean that you
have made it act consistent. Just because you have blended look does not
mean that you have blended feel. Appearance does not equal behavior.
Many UI people will tell you it is worse to have something that looks
similiar and acts different as opposed to something that looks different
*and* acts different. When you have two environments that are made to be
virtually indistinguishable in appearance but behave differently, you
are basically betraying the end user into thinking that one program will
have the same sets of behaviors as another. And when these expectations
about action and consequence are routinely violated, you will have
anything ranging from an increase in the time and frustration it takes
to do a task to outright destruction of the work the user has done.


A perfect example of these differences in behavior would be the file
dialogs of the two major linux dekstop environments, where KDE's dialog
has "Ok" and "Cancel" buttons on the left and right, respectively, while
GNOME has their "Cancel" button on the left and their "Ok" button on the
right.* 

       GNOME:        [Cancel]  [Ok]
       KDE:            [Ok]  [Cancel]


An example more pertinant to the scenario below would be the "no" and
"yes" dialog buttons

       GNOME:          [No]  [Yes]
       KDE:           [Yes]  [No]


Now let's say that we have an end user with oodles of experience using
Dia, a GNOME diagramming program, who decides to try a new piece of
software he or she hasn't used before, called "KWrite". 

As the user is writing their term paper with KWrite, they realize that
their window is not maximized and go to hit the maximize button, which
is located very dangerously close to the button that tends to quit
applications (following a UI precdent set by the very same people who
gave you the talking paper clip). It's 3AM, the term paper is due in 10
hours, and the end-user is now on their 12th cup of coffee and more
jittery than a bowl full of Jello on the San Andreas fault line. The
worse case scenario happens, the end user hits the "Close Window" button
accidently, and all seems lost. But then, out of nowhere, an "Are you
sure you want to quit without saving" dialog pops up to save the day!
The user has only 500 milliseconds to think! Relying on his or her quick
wits and intuition, the end-user pieces together in 350 milliseconds
that because the KWrite dialog is aesthetically indistinguishable from
the Dia dialog in all its BlueCurvey goodness, it must behave in exactly
the same way! In Dia you save your work from total annihilation by
answering the question "Do you want to quit without saving" with the
left button "No", so it must be the exact same for KWrite. Quick, hit
the left button in KWrite before all is lost.....


Well, the course was on the literary analysis of J.R.R Tolkien. It'll
probably be fun to repeat it next semester, anyhow.

Of course from then on end-user will say to every one they meet "Those
nasty Redhatses. Steals our precious paper from us, they did. Dirty,
nasty linux zealotses. They lies to us about linux not being hard to
use." And then you see them in a Windows XP "switcher" ad 6 months later
talking about how the made the switch to XP after linux lost their term
paper.  ;)

The moral of the story: If you can't make it act 100% the same, don't
even bother making it look similiar. Consistency in appearance is
important, but consistency in behavior is several orders of magnitude
more important than that. At least when something *looks* different
there is an implication that it will *act* different. 

When the Red Hat road tour came by NCSU, I tried to explain this to the
guy that created the whole BlueCurve theme. I was rather disappointed
that he didn't consider this a big deal. 

--Ilan 

*Some people will take notice of the fact that GNOME recently switched
the button ordering for their dialogs. This was the right decision to
make. Apple had originally placed "Cancel" on the left and "Ok" on the
right because it matches with paradigm in western culture of Negative/Go
Back actions being on the left (brake pedal, taking screw out, reading
backwards etc.) and Affirmative/Go ahead (gas pedel, putting screw in,
reading ahead) on the right. Microsoft switched the ordering because
they didn't want a lawsuit from apple (fat lot of good that did them).
KDE copied microsoft because "they've got billions of dollars, so they
must know what we're doing", and GNOME copied KDE because "they've
already got a desktop environment out there and running, so they must
know what they're doing." 


-- 
My choice after I quit film school was either to be a script writer for
porno flicks or a linux UI designer. And to tell you the truth, there's
hardly any difference.