[openbeos] Haiku poster
- From: Nicholas Blachford <nicholas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 02:52:33 +0100
The line:
"Best defaults not maximum configurability"
Made me cringe, it makes me think of Gnome which IMO is a horrible
desktop.
The problem with Gnome is they have equated "best options" with "only
options".
It assumes you are stupid and that makes it really annoying to use.
KDE on the other hand has far too many options, it's lot better than
it used to be though.
That said I think the problem isn't so much one of too many options
as more of how to organise them.
They're not very well organised in KDE, it is this makes it seem
horribly over complicated.
I think it's quite possible to have a highly configurable system
which is also easy to use, it will be very difficult to design but I
do believe it can be done, it's really a question of balance.
You need only look at OS X to see evidence of it - OS X is a lot more
configurable than many might think. I know some people in the Haiku
community don't like OS X but when it comes to GUI there's really
nothing else out there which comes close.
BeOS had a wonderful interface, it didn't blind you with science like
KDE and it didn't assume you were a dimwit like Gnome. It was a GUI
done right (mostly*). It was minimalist, but not too minimalist.
*I've never liked the idea of a start menu type interface.
I assume Haiku will go along the same path but this cannot be
assumed. Unfortunately the open source community as a whole doesn't
have a great record in UI design. Be had a number of user interface
specialists, I don't know if Haiku has any.
Anyway, this was really a rant about Gnome, not Haiku...
Maybe I should have just said that I think that sentence could be
better worded!
--
Nicholas Blachford
www.ps3coderz.com
www.blachford.info
"Do not fear death, fear having not lived."
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