While back I had offered the group a 4 or 5 year study (can't remember how many years now) of users and their impressions, suggestions, complaint and so on regarding KDE and Ark Linux (most KDE since it was how they interfaced) but no one seemed interested.
Because of this I've remained silent watching the emails go by. However, I'm going to offer some of that now.
Much appreciated.
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Beware of excessive customization, they rarely go over well. 90% of the time, the users found a basic initial setup a good ground point to customize their DE.
You are correct. However in this case, the only changes made were to replace KDE references with TDE ones; this is required as Trinity is a fork of KDE, and I don't know how much longer KDE e.V. (which holds the trademarks for the affected images) is going to put up with this project using their symbols. Visually the changes are very minor.
- I always found the KDE-Classic Icon Theme somewhat unpleasant. The
Crystal SVG icon set is popular and cleaner.
Agree; it looks like the default is already set to crystalsvg in the code though?
A variety of icon sets should be made available, crystal is indeed one of the most popular, as were (in my studies) sparkle, Alien Aqua Baghira was also a very popular theme.
Are those icon sets fully GPL compatible? If so, can you send over links to them for possible inclusion?
<snip>
- Change the default desktop icon text to non-shadowed, white.
Not sure on this one; the non-shadowed icons blend in to certain desktop wallpapers and this may confuse users over time. Any thoughts from other list members?
None shadowing, helps in most cases, once again, especially with the visually impaired. A semi bright blue will show up on dark and light backgrounds.
I would; I'm just getting nervous about the amount of UI changes being made in this release. Maybe for 3.5.13?
- Get rid of the bouncing mouse cursor. :) Yeah, I mentioned that
already. I'm making a not-so-subtle point. The thing is obnoxious. Stupid,
Dumb. Irritating. Annoying. Childish. Unprofessional. I greatly
appreciate > > any distro I test where the devs have changed the default
mouse pointer to Non Busy. And quite a few devs have done that too.
Fully agree; I thought I already got rid of it though?
The bouncy cursor is very popular, but was off by default on pure kde distros.
It's still available, just turned off by default.
- None of the desktop device icons are enabled. You went through the
effort to create many new useful icons, so why not add them and set enable
Device Icons as the default?
Agree; changed.
Define Icon sets enabled?
The default is now for six new system icons to show up on the desktop, much like MS Windows. These icons can be turned off by the user in the desktop configuration dialog if desired.
- I don't understand the fetish and dumbing down with the default
view in Konqueror with icons. Set the default view to Tree View, and Show Hidden Files. Treat users like adults and not kids. :)
I completely agree here as do the results of my studies. 100% of the average 80 people switched to treeview (but didn't show hidden files). This dumbing down, for example "folders" instead of directory, is killing the chances of creating an educated KDE user.
I'll have to think about it some more. I have users at an educational institution that are completely confused when presented with the tree view; I wonder if this default should be set by each distribution based on its intended audience. E.g. Ubuntu users won't like the tree view, but maybe Slackware users would?
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- So you added the option to use a Kickoff style K-Menu. Nice
programming touch. Really! You'll never see me use the Kickoff though.
I'm just too old to change some habits. :)
None of my users like kickoff, they preferred a the straight to the point kmenu. They do like personalized menus, its basically a dir contained in a "system" dir in user's home. the dir contains deskop files of the fave apps. Which is then used as a quick browser on kicker. Its a great short cut to all the most used apps. I can create a video for anyone who is interested. The most used "mini menu" is the penguin menu (so called because use a crystal tux for the icon, everyone loves it). You drag and drop your fave apps in there and then click, there it is. As I said, I can provide videos to anyone who wants to see it in action.
I personally hate Kickoff myself, but it was a very popular feature request for Trinity. The K Menu will *always* be the default for the Trinity project.
- Place the Exit/Lockout applet buttons on the default kicker. Many
people use the buttons and they provide a familiar method to exit for new users.
yes and no. I have found that, if people use a top bar, they like it, but putting it on the bottom kicker makes it "too busy". Most of my users, use ctrl, alt del, to bring it up or just right click on the desktop itself (most common way they use).
Good point; I started to notice this myself when dogfooding the recent changes. This change has been reverted, but I have left a single #define statement in kdebase/kicker/kicker/core/containerarea.cpp to control this feature, should a distribution wish to reactivate it.
I hope this is of some use and for what its worth.
Thanks again; hard data always helps!
Tim