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Weblog:   Refining for usability
Subject:   GNOME already tried this
Date:   2004-04-28 09:21:49
From:   jdub
Dude, this path is well-beaten and understood to be a strategic failure. It was tried with Nautilus, but was removed (from the stable 1.x branch, no less), and there's many a discussion on the GNOME mailing lists documenting the pros and exhaustive cons of this approach. Fix the problem: Make your software 'just work'. :-)
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  • GNOME already tried this
    2004-04-28 09:26:53  jdub [Reply | View]

    ... and lest we forget the wonderful Sawfish. Great window manager for window manager fetishists, but totally insane exponential interactions between the hundreds of exposed options, and user levels to boot. Impossible to support or fully understand.

    Note also that GConf isn't GNOME's way of
    "hiding options". Options in the GConf schema but not in the user interface are few and far between. We've actually taken most of that cruft out of the software itself, not just papered over it with a "dumbed-down" UI. GConf is just the mechanism behind it all.
    • Jono Bacon photo GNOME already tried this
      2004-04-28 10:20:39  Jono Bacon | O'Reilly AuthorO'Reilly Blogger [Reply | View]

      When you say this approach has been tried and tested - do you mean the KDE way of shoving everything in the Control Center approach or the schema approach that I am suggesting? Sorry, I was a little unsure which approach you are referring to.
      • GNOME already tried this
        2004-04-28 10:33:09  jdub [Reply | View]

        User levels, as you (amongst others) are suggesting.
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