12 Feb
2012
12 Feb
'12
6:29 a.m.
On Sat February 11 2012, Steven D'Aprano <"Steven D'Aprano"
<steve(a)pearwood.info>> wrote:
Timothy Pearson wrote:
That's a good point on the Usability vs. Features graph. Never
thought of it before, but it does seem to be true.
Alternatives ... much to my surprise, I saw a previous reply mention
still using OS/2. I guess I'd investigate that, or look for my old
FVWM config files.
Douglas
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What triggered this was a new salvo from KDE4
claiming that 4.8
is the best desktop ever, and that those backwards TDE luddites
should just use a minimalist window manager if they don't like
KDE4. I'm trying to prove them wrong. :-)
Draw a graph of Usability vs Features. It should look something
like a parabola.
Too few features has low usability, because the interface is dumbed
down. Gnome has a tendency to dip down into this "our users drank
lead paint as babies" area too often.
Plus it has one of the most hideous and least usable file open/save
dialogs in the known universe. There are alien species in distant
galaxies that interact with their computers by flinging fresh
excrement (a bit like YouTube commenters) who have a better file
open/save interface than Gnome's.
Too many features (or perhaps I should say, "features" in scare
quotes) also has low usability, because it's too damn hard to use,
and requires too much computing grunt for useless eye-candy and
poorly thought out functionality that sounds good in principle but
isn't in practice. KDE 4 spends most of its time hanging around
there, probably waiting for Akonadi or Nepomuk to finish whatever
pointless task they're doing so the computer will become
responsive again.
Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium, where you have the
maximum usability from all the features you actually need and none
of the cruft that you don't -- that was KDE 3, and that is TDE.