David Nielsen wrote:
lør, 18 11 2006 kl. 11:48 +0100, skrev Olivier Galibert:
On Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 08:37:16AM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
Users want to configure using a gui.
That displays the fallacy that users want to configure stuff.
Users don't want to configure. But they do have habits and
preferences. Some like bigger fonts, others like animation. Some want
(*gasp*) to change their wallpaper. I've been known to enter my name
and email address into my mailer.
An unconfigurable application will probably be suitable for one user
(its developer).
They might want the option to tune an application but generally users
just want applications to work and will as a rule rather live with a
suboptimal default configuration for their soecific job than dig through
options and confusing tools/dialogs.
The lesson we have to take away from this is to strive for good default
but remain configurable through a nice uniform interface. This is
exactly why gconf is so cool, translatable decriptor strings explain
what every key does for the user who likes to tweak the more exoteric
parts of their applications and the rest get a nice clean interface with
good defaults and the bare essencesial options.
gconftool is way better than configuration files (and you raise a good
point -- localization -- that is missing from good old config files).
However an application specific UI can (and should) be much better
organized than gconf.
Please don't assume that users _want_ to configure, it's not an end
goal, it's a means to get work done.
That was my point exactly. Putting things in configuration files
_prevents_ users from getting that work done. Putting things in gconf
is better, but still user-unfriendly (open an external application, find
the root of the configured application's tree, start hacking things in a
generic interface rather than one tailored to the task).
--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function
--
fedora-devel-list mailing list
fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
