On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 17:57 -0400, Will Cohen wrote: Lots of very encouraging stuff. Thanks Will. :-) > METRICS > > Unfortunately, many people's metrics for desktop applications were > literally eyeballed, click a menu item see how long it takes for the > result to occur. This is difficult to automate and script. We really A small comment: the only really meaningful metric from the user's point of view is "does it take too long?". This is a binary variable. It is of course totally subjective, but _that is the point_ --- "objective" considerations are not meaningful to users. What I am trying to say is that (I humbly suggest) you face two problems: first finding the most pressing problems; and then fixing them. Objective metrics help with the second, but not the first. Examples: 1) Clicking on the Nautilus desktop menu to open a terminal results in a noticeable delay before the window has appeared on the screen. For such a simple application it should be instantaneous (my rig is a 2,.4GHz Athlon with 767MB RAM). 2) Opening a PDF file with gv results in an instantaneous appearance of the window; using ggv takes about five seconds. 3) A noticeable delay starting gedit (same reasoning as per terminal). I know that these "simple" apps hide hidden complexity due to their gnomeyness, but again, that is irrelevant to users. I hope the above is useful. Please don't read it as bitching. I _love_ Fedora and GNOME, and I want to express my gratitude to those of you who have provided me with such an enjoyable computing environment. cheers, John -- ICQ: 261810463 AIM: johnfrombluff AOL: johnfrombluff MSN: johnwilliamsFromBluff@xxxxxxxxxxx Yahoo: JohnFromBluff Jabber: jwilliamsFromBluff@xxxxxxxxxx
