[TriLUG] Strange UI Problem....

[Brian Weaver]

Jeremy,

I just discovered the Gnome/GTK2 flames on the web prior to reading 
your e-mail. I was about to respond to the list, in part to apologize
to the KDE folks. It does appear that all my issues are with respect
to GTK2 apps. In particular Thunderbird and FireFox. Aside from Konsole
they are really the only two other apps that I run with any consistency.

Now that I think about it the problem started with the 0.5 release of 
Thunderbird and 0.8 release of Firefox. 

The thing that really gripes me is that the left-to-right OK/Cancel order
only has about 10+ years of inertia behind it. I really wonder WTF the 
justification for the change was? Are they saying that Cancel is hit more
often then OK, and thus it should be the first choice? I've worked with
computers for a long time now (it really gives me pause about how old I 
am now) and I've used a LOT of bad interface. Sometime BAD is better than
RIGHT as long as it is CONSISTENT! Yeah, we all like to have things done
the right way, but I'd hazzard a guess that 99% of the computers users
don't give a hoot what right is, so long as it is consistent.

I was hoping to setup a Linux box for my wife to facilitate her exodus 
from Windows. I'm not so sure now because little things like the button
order, while they may seem insignificant, would potentially make the 
transition a negative experience. I guess I will either have to find
a way to dynamically reverse the button order or hope that the Gnome/KDE
folks can come to some standard so it is all consistent.

Inconsistency is the hallmark of a bad user experience.

Just my 2 cents worth.

-Weave


Jeremy Portzer [jeremyp at pobox.com] wrote on Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 11:18:32AM -0500:
> On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 10:51, Brian Weaver wrote:
> > I'm hoping that someone on the list might know what the f**k is going
> > on with my desktop. I'm running RedHat 9 and I'm using KDE as my desktop.
> > I'm not sure when, but I started noticing that all my 'Cancel' and 'OK'
> > buttons on dialogs were reversed.
> 
> Did you recently switch to KDE from Gnome?
> 
> The order of the Cancel/OK is one of the ongoing flamewars on all the UI
> design discussion lists.  If Ilan Volov is reading, he can hopefully
> provide some insight on this.  But the crux of it is, KDE/qt folks
> believe in one method, and Gnome/gtk folks believe in the other, and
> they are set in their ways.  I really believe that a standard system
> should be adopted, and if I were choosing it, it would be OK on the left
> and Cancel on the right, to be consistent with Microsoft Windows, thus
> making new Linux users more comfortable.
> 
> However, if you're saying that you've been using KDE on Red Hat Linux 9
> all along, and suddenly the buttons switched, then I have no idea what's
> going on.  I don't think that the Bluecurve theme that Red Hat includes
> changes the order of the buttons, but maybe it does?  Could that be
> related?
> 
> --Jeremy
> 
> 
> -- 
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