Re: [trinity-devel] The Default Trinity Desktop

17 Sep 2010

...
  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.

<snip>
...
  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.

...

  2. 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>
...
   > 6. 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?

...

   7. 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.

...

   8. 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.

...

   9. 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?

<snip>
...
    13. 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.

...

   14. 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

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Re: [trinity-devel] The Default Trinity Desktop