Re: [Usability] A battery applet...

[Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>]

On Thu, 2004-12-16 at 10:00 +0000, Sergey Udaltsov wrote:
> > Yeah, preferably gconf stuff you can "tweak" as a power user - I mean,
> > the less config UI there is and the better the app is in "just do the
> > right thing" the less unnecessary "configuration" I need to do after
> > installing linux on a new computer for example. Stuff should just work,
> > and the desktop should be clean and polished.
> :) Sounds nearly utopian:)

It's actually not. Look how far we have come in the last few years. It's
a matter of changing our thinking from "is this preferences dialog using
HIG style?" to "How can I make my program so clever I dont need all
these settings?". Sure, this might not be completely achieveable as a
goal, but if we aim there, we will get good apps out of it even if we
need to make compromises.

It makes us *think* beyond the style of the widget set, spacing, fonts..
HIG is nice and cool for that, but we must not stop there. We need to go
deeper and figure out what the program is trying to solve, how to make
it "smart" (try to automatically set things up if possible) etc.

This is stuff I have been thinking about a lot lately, and it is *hard*.
Making pretty icons is easy - this stuff melts my brain very often. I
think it just takes time to get adjusted in the new "mindset" I guess..
But I think we'll get there eventually :)

//Tuomas