Re: [Usability] default titlebar button layout [was: preferences

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On May 23, 2007, at 1:48 PM, Jacob Beauregard wrote:
> ...
> On Tuesday 22 May 2007 20:45:41 Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > Because the ease of doing anything in an interface should be
> > proportional to how many people want to do it, how often they want to
> > do it, how urgently they want to do it, and the average benefit of
> > doing it.
> >
> > With rearranging title bar buttons, hardly anyone wants to, those who
> > do typically do it only once, it's never urgent, and the benefit is 
> > not great. Given that, it's remarkable that it doesn't even require
> > recompiling.
>
> I've already explained why the benefit is great for me.

Yes, you have, which is why you're here. Meanwhile, the vast majority 
of other Gnome users are getting actual work done.

On a constructive note, if you are now motivated to even the effort 
slope a bit by developing your own TweakUI-like utility for options 
like that, I'm sure others would be interested.

> It helps me perform  organizational strategies in a restricted 
> environment. The ease of doing so is one of the biggest reasons I 
> prefer KDE to GNOME.

And conversely, the lack of such prominent geekery is part of the 
reason revenue-seeking Linux distributors prefer Gnome to KDE.

> ...
> There is one major problem with what you are saying: Apart from the 
> fact people rarely change any preferences, if specific functionality 
> is not available via settings, users often expect that it doesn't 
> exist.

Most functions of *any* graphical program aren't available via its 
settings.

> If I asked my mom to perform the task of moving the buttons from the 
> top-right of the window to the top-left of the window, she wouldn't 
> know how to do it. She would probably spend a half hour in the 
> preferences menu bar looking for things that might be able to do it.
> ...

I admire your mother's tenacity, but for goodness sake, don't you and 
she both have more interesting things to do? :-)

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/