Comments on: Is the whole world smiling or just laughing behind your back

By: Søren Hauberg

Søren Hauberg — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:15:41 +0000

While the community is diverse, it is true that the average Free program is way too complex to actually use. It is, however, clear that some of you GNOME guys are working hard on changing this. For this, I thank you; it is greatly appreciated.

By: J5

J5 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:54:31 +0000

The three option system was discussed years ago around the GNOME 2.0 timeframe. It sounds like a good idea but in practice means you are creating three different code paths, two of which are inevitably going to suffer as the developer starts running into the complexities of maintaining such diverging UIs. It is much better to keep core functionality in libraries and have different set of developers develop different applications based on their core audience. We see this approach with the OLPC, Maemo and Moblin. Hiding complexity is not the same as mitigating it. Again, look at Apple. They don’t come out and say lets make an iPod interface for novices, intermediates and power users. They simply say, lets design a kick ass music player that everyone can use.

By: anonymouse

anonymouse — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:10:01 +0000

I like the idea of having about three modes of UI; beginner, intermediate, advanced. Progressively more options are exposed as higher modes are selected.

By: J5

J5 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:24:02 +0000

So Luis’ sentiment hits the nail on the head here. The fact that people would take the OO.org mouse seriously is the perception we have to deal with. Like it or not, Linux inside gets lumped with complexity inside. Mitigating complexity is also about managing perception of that complexity.

Look at Microsoft. Windows 7 is probably marginally better than Vista. I don’t doubt they have improved it but it probably still suffers from much of the problems that plagued previous Windows versions. They have however been largely able to get people excited over the release because hey, at least it isn’t as bad a Vista. By managing the perception they are able to mostly navigate their own mistakes and come out unscathed on the other side. Apple is taking out ads to hammer home the previous perceptions.

To that effect Google is trying the same thing with Droid. Their first few iterations of the G Phone have mostly been met with meh so now they are trying to correct the perception of a maker of clunky ugly phones with a sleek new advertising campaign aimed at Apple’s iPhone shortcomings. We will see if they can deliver.

By: Henrique Rodrigues

Henrique Rodrigues — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:08:39 +0000

The problem here is that people put all the FLOSS community on the same bag, which is nonsense. The user interface paradigm on GNOME and the user interface paradigm on KDE are vey different from one another. OpenOffice.org, KOffice and Abiword are different beasts, also.

The community is not single-minded and that is the main point that everyone should realize.

Imagine if we said that the “closed / proprietary software community” doesn’t know how to build good interfaces because some shareware app was designed by a monkey. It’s a stupid thing to say. Yet, people use this kind of reasoning when talking about FLOSS.

By: nicu

nicu — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:25:58 +0000

There is a *huge* debate inside the OOo community about that mouse… it was proposed as an “incubator” project and it was misleadingly presented as official. Now the people in charge issue delimitations, showing is not official.

By: oliver

oliver — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:12:59 +0000

IMO you’re feeling too pessimistic about this… First, many open-source developers these days (esp. from the Gnome/Fedora/Ubuntu corner) are quite good at removing unnecessary complexity; and second, many users are appreciative of this. It’s just that the complexity-lovers are more vocal and cry if devs disable Alt-Ctrl-Backspace or similar stuff.

Personally I’m excited about gnome-shell and Zeitgeist, exactly because I hope it gives us a simplified UI for dealing with files and applications. Having Nautilus and bash available for “raw file system access” is still important, but having Zeitgeist etc. offer a different, user-centric view is a huge step forward. And I think many users will appreciate this, even if they will not praise loudly.

By: Benjamin Otte

Benjamin Otte — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:49:21 +0000

We do not solve the hard problems. “Perfection is not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing to take away.” And most Open Source hackers never think about taking away, especially not taking away as much as possible.

Which also ties into another problem that OSS projects run into more often than not: Taking away stuff later is way harder to sell to your users than not adding it in the first place. There is a lot of things that almost noone needs and that confuse people (my current pet peeve: menu accelerators and mnemonics in general), but if you wanna remove them, there’ll be a HUGE flamefest. So it’s better to not add them in the first place – but who does that?

By: Luis

Luis — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:28:56 +0000

I’m pretty sure the mouse is just a joke, but that people would take it seriously says tons about OOo.

(And I’m not quite yet a lawyer; bar exam results in less than two weeks and then have to get sworn in, etc.)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:06:34 +0000

I remain unconvinced that the Open Office Mouse doesn’t just represent a grand practical joke.