As for the underlying server I had hopes for X.org making things better than XFree, but I was wrong.

And no, it's not because it's aimed at developers. Developer's needs arent' remotely addressed by these UIs. And not any developer I know ever cared to learn screen frequencies to change the resolution.

If win and mac are made for stupid, linux DEs are made for elitist, pretentious stupid.

Defending the poor choices of graphics on Linux, and denial, as if everyone with another opinion was a windows or mac fan, won't make things any better.

>who the fuck expects to magically go to a setting that will increase the font size in all their applications?

I do!

I want to be able to press something like Ctrl-Alt-Shift and scroll the mouse-wheel to resize all active viewports, giving special treatment to the frame under my mouse as its sizing unless the mouse is pointing at an edge.

specifically, I want a Meta-Ctrl-Alt-Shift to highlight and select all active display-elements so that i can de-select items i want to exclude from the re-size. I want these items to be remembered too.

Just because that's hard and the flamer I'm replying to couldn't imagine a use-case or has gone numb around the inconveniences we all suffer daily from concepts fractured into replacable modules (zend anyone?) doesn't mean that any of today's environments have allowed presentation to be sensible and free of absolutes!

I recently decided to try out XFCE 4.8 (doing some major distro hunting, thanks to Unity and gnome-shell), and have been toying with it for about 48 hours. KDE's settings look and (lack of) organization is just as bad.

I've developed plenty of software and hardware over the years, but haven't spent my life exclusively in development. Have been in sales, management, executive position, ownership, etc. Perhaps that gives a coder better perspective? I can't imagine how people who are so intellectually capable in certain ways...can make such horrible decisions.

Thanks for the laugh. And the truth.

Seems what for making you happy just need place "tooltips" with explanation of control on every icon.

Let me explain : Xfce is a brain detector.

Thats simple

> if you can configure Xfce , then you have a brain.

> if not , no brain.

:]

Don't feed the troll ... if you have a brain ...

(aytch-tee-tee-pee-colon-slash-slash) penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?title=the_six_kinds_of_anti_foss_trolls

PS, I'd consider the usability of the comment form on my own blog first, were I you. If your system can't tell the difference between a legitimate and relevant comment-with-link and a spambot without TELLING THE USER WHAT NOT TO TYPE, it's broken.

PPS, I have Windows 3.1 running in DOSBox on my Linux desktop (Google it, it's possible) and in fact there is no one place to change text size for the whole system either, since font settings for desktop elements are a different matter from application (editor) font settings.

So ok, just look at GNOME, it's settings manager is a lot better, u can use it's "Font settings" to adjust every aspect of fonts without knowing anything about window managers, panels, etc.. Same applies to themes. Because it is the purpose of Desktop Environment to provide an interface to this stuff to be usable by everyone.

And why that 6.76 billion people care about installing WMs, panels, etc? I think they dont.

What proportion of those people would even suspect that you *could* change the text size in all applications? A very small one, I suspect.

Anyway I gave up on XFCE when they explicitly refused to provide a way to get rid of the trash icon and disable it because "people use it to keep their files".

You have to understand I'm not saying there isn't a problem. The problem just isn't here.

You've confused flexibility with simplicity. Xfce has already changed this for the newer version, but that doesn't mean it's simpler. Consider this.

Let's say there's 3 places to change the font. Alright, you can't just add another font control that adjusts all the fonts and call that simpler. It might be easier once you know how it works, but not simpler. Since someone might want to change their window manager font separately you still have to have the separate controls as well right?

Alright, so now what do you have? You don't have 1 good place to change the fonts. You just have 4 bad places.

Alright, so what's the new user see when he comes in now? He sees four places to change the fonts instead of three. You've made the problem WORSE. Yeah so one changes all of them so you tell the user that. Then they're not confused anymore and along they go on their merry way right?

Alright, ten minutes after the new user gets his Xubuntu system up and running what does he do? He installs Compiz+Emerald. Guess what? Emerald has yet again ANOTHER way of adjusting its own fonts and you're right back where you started.

However, now you have 5 places to change the fonts and guess what? The other one doesn't quite work correctly anymore because it changes all the fonts BUT the window titles now because now you're using Emerald for that.

Now, what do you think happens when they stop using their panels and install a dock to launch their programs instead? Ah, SIX places to change the fonts and now there's TWO places where the universal controller might not work.

So, now you get something like this on the message boards.

"I installed Xubuntu and I used to be able to adjust my fonts system wide. However, after I installed Compiz the fonts in the Emerald window titles don't change anymore. Why? Is it broke?"

Now, if you get one tool to adjust all the fonts for every dock, desktop manager, and window manager without knowing about them ahead of time fine, but so far that has never worked quite perfect and in the end you always end up with six or seven different places to fix your fonts.

The problem isn't in the GUI. It's simply how the system handles fonts.

The gist of your post is spot-on, but like all rants made in the vacuum of vocal blog posts, unless you take the necessary steps to make it produce some action, it's going to either alienate or be completely lost on the exact set of people who can and should do something about it.

At least XCFE is still supported and can be customized

With flexibility comes complexity. (

In the current Windows up to XP, you can't do it at all. Each application is separate. I don't know if you can do it in xfce, either.

This article is almost like asking how you make a Ford take off and fly.

Now, please realize that the software development team of Xfce consists of, I believe, about seven people, could be less. The UI Design team of Xfce consists of, IIRC, exactly *zero* people. The fact that the settings categories are alphabetical is because the developers didn't realize it could be better, *not* because they dono't care about the users or something. That, and the few developers simply haven't got the time to incorporate every suggestion a non-developer makes into Xfce.

Furthermore, this settings manager is obviously not modeled after Windows 3.1's, it's just what the developers thought most appropriate.

Also, a new version of Xfce has recently been released that will be included in Xubuntu 9.04 that revises the Settings Manager a little bit (with some usability improvements, even though it doesn't solve the issues mentioned here). User Interface settings is called Appearance, for example.

Speaking of which, Jim Campbell is working very hard to provide good documentation for Xubuntu (there actually already is very good documentation available) and is looking to collaborate with upstream Xfce so you can also find it at that website.

And again, giving the users a clue is a priority of the developers, but they have *a lot* of priorities and they can't live up to them all. Luckily there are commited users like Jim who try to remedy this.

As for the settings being in two different locations: yes, that's not that ideal in terms of integration, if you look at the Xfce website, it says:

"Xfce 4.6 embodies the traditional UNIX philosophy of modularity and re-usability. "

More power to you, a little bit more time spent looking for little options like this, which you probably won't do that often anyway.

Also, I think it's unfair to compare this to Windows 3.1 which had far fewer options. Categories aren't a bad thing per se - if you'd list all options in one page, that'd be confusing as hell. Still, if you like that, you can try editing them all in one place with the new Xfce's xfconf system ;)

Oh, and another thing I really like: you can easily hop in to the #xubuntu chatroom and ask where a setting is. I'm usually around there and I know my way around, so yay for community :)

(I hope I kinda got my message across, this is about the longest comment I ever wrote and it's really rambly and unstructured, but I needed to get that off my chest and I really don't feel like re-reading and revising it like I would, say, a blog post.)

"Getting Real" was not written by the developers of Ruby. Those folks developed Ruby on Rails.

Even if you cant find the settings on first try - which should be improved - XFCE as a whole REMAINS simple to use.

This is different to Gnome, because Gnome does have a lot more stuff and as such cannot remain as simple anyway.

So if i'm going to use another window manager, like homosexual Enlightenment 16, i'll be able to access its settings via that "Window Manager" item? No? Than why we cant have more user-friendly control panel?

Also, just look at Windows Vista's or XP's Control Panel. It is a True Labyrinth of settings, screens, icons (most of them looks really awfull), small descriptional texts under icons. So much to look and read to perform any simple change. No any Linux' window manager can't beat Vista/XP in that. So you'd better complain on Vista, not XFCE.

I'm using Enlightenment 16, if you are curios.

more options and configurations.

img25.imageshack.us/my.php?image=89409523.png

But then, XFCE isn't actually targeting newbie users. I'd say it's currently used by more educated Linux users, who actually enjoy tinkering with their system. Still, I also sometimes got confused by the settings panel. Then again, I do not change settings on a daily basis. A little peeking every other month maybe? So, not that big of a deal for me.

However, if Xubuntu is meant for the masses, a bit more UI optimization might be in place. I like the Win3.1 comparison. And maybe some tooltips might already suffice to help XFCE newbies.

I know, go make your own desktop for free, PUNK.

I'm pretty sure that if I checked in GNOME it would go something like:

System>Preferences>Appearance>Fonts

And then I'd have a list of window elements and font-types.

As for using other window managers, if I'd installed a new window manager I'd expect to look at its manager for theming options. That would be intuitive.

Though i would argue that XFCE's disregard for making useable software is actually good, as it opens up a whole new market for people who actually have an *incentive* for writing good useable software.

Ah, silly me. I read on XFCE’s Web site that it aims to be “user friendly”, and I made the mistake of believing it. If you’re an XFCE developer, maybe you could fix the Web site to remove that part? If you’re not, though, I doubt the XFCE developers would be happy with you representing them that way.

“Install ubuntu, or help them dumb things down for your sort, if for some reason you can't abide by gnome.”

Actually, my day job at Canonical is helping to smarten up Ubuntu both for “my sort” and for the millions of other people who use it. And I sincerely hope you *aren’t* an XFCE developer, because if you are, that’s a bad sign for Xubuntu.

Human Computer Interaction is an interesting field, it goes into the psychology of how people interact with computers, so flame the author for critising your favourite application is a pretty useless exercise, especially when he offers solutions.

To say it makes sense to you is also a bit of a pointless exercise, as you (and the others who understand it) could be a very small subset of all possible users. Applications, if want to have a big uptake, should be designed for the majority of users.

Your most impostant point is why are they still so bad? Do the devs not care about the users? Are they incompetent UI designers? Yes and yes, in different measures for different dev teams. And this is why Linux will never be good enough.

who the fuck expects to magically go to a setting that will increase the font size in all their applications?

what the fucking hell programs do you use where you even have a default fucking font size? and you think it's the OS's responsibility to define that font?

the problem is, mister usability, you just may be weird. As in, nobody has predicted _your particular use case_ and hence has not made the software custom tailored to your particular use case.

not to mention that xfce is not meant for people like you. Install ubuntu, or help them dumb things down for your sort, if for some reason you can't abide by gnome. They have better things to do than deal with your fucking usability rants.

Maybe so, but what about the 6.76 billion people who don’t care about how Linux works and never will? The success of an operating system is inversely proportional to how much people need to think about how it works.

A better idea would be to arrange the settings so that people didn’t need to care about which pixels on the screen are drawn by the “window manager program”, which are drawn by the ”file manager program”, which by the “desktop manager”, and which by the “panel manager”. So that, for example, people could use a single setting to change the text size used by all those components, instead of having to change it in four separate places. (That doesn’t necessarily mean the individual settings shouldn’t exist too, but the all-in-one setting should be most prominent.)

For the general problem of categorizing settings, look up “card sorting” with your favorite Web search engine.

Like the file manager settings aren't a separate set of file manager settings you have to set. They're the same options you'd get in the file manager itself. Settings manager is just a convenience app to group stuff that is otherwise scattered around the system.

In Windows you have to go through Start Menu properties, right click+Personalize dialog, Control Panel, and Explorer+Tools+Folder Options dialog to find all the same stuff.

I don't understand how going through 4 different setting programs located in 4 different places is easier than just this 1 dialog box. Also, just the Control Panel in Windows has a thousand times more options. I have never found them all and I still get lost in there.

When you think about how Linux works, it actually makes complete sense. They're organized like that because you have a window manager program, you have file manager program, you have a desktop manager, you have a panel manager and they can all be swapped out for something else. All separate programs in Linux so they're separate icons.

It's really not that hard. You want to adjust the desktop then click Desktop. Want to adjust your panels click Panel. Want to adjust your keyboard click Keyboard. If you want to adjust your mouse then click Mouse. You want to adjust your sound then click Sound. They're even in alphabetical order for you. You'd almost have to be mentally disabled not to understand it.

I mean, if I had a suggestion on how to make it simpler I would surely give it instead of being a stuck up Linux snob because I hate those people, but honestly, this time, I really cannot see how to make this any easier than it already is. If anyone can explain a better idea than this I will bow down and say yes I'm sorry, settings manager really is completely retarded.

If you can't write a decent manual, why in the world would anyone think you can deduce what users need from watching them use your software?

By all means watch a variety of users use your software -- and documentation -- and learn from that. Dismissing manuals as "having gone the way of the floppy disk" just indicates that you consider your users to be illiterate idiots, and if that indeed is your demographic, more power to you.

But be sure to tell them this, so everyone else knows to run away from the crap you're peddling.

It relates to 3.1 because in Xubuntu you can't fucking find anything. I love it, I thought the default themes were cool and it was nice and light, but I couldn't find a damn thing. Too cluttered.

As far as designing something intuitive, he's right. Human Factors, and that company in Cupertino has taught the industry that getting mad at users for not understanding how to use something only makes you look like the moron...

You explanation of why "it is what it is" is perfect, and makes a lot of sense, but you and i understanding it is useless to the other 99% of people who don't, and more importantly, don't care to.

The one thing i've learned and learned well is that users don't want to learn how something works, or even understand it. They just want it to work, and that's it. Designs that cater to that win, those that don't... are used by the other 1%.

If you're by some coincidence working on XFCE then that product is already a failure. You've been given a wonderful piece of feedback in spectacular detail and your first thought is to insult the author.

Some advice, read "Getting Real" by the developers of Ruby, and a Human Factors book or two... comeback and re-evaluate the feedback.

The reason the title bar text is set in Window Manager is because it is completely separate. A user could be using any number of window mangers with XFCE not just the default xfwm.

How does this relate to Windows 3.1's control panel at all? XP, Vista and even Win7 beta have this same layout. So if at any time there is a window with alphabetically sorted icons it is automatically a Windows 3.1 throwback?