[Tfug] Why GNOME was the stupidest idea in Linux history...

[Zack Williams]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 9:47 PM, Bowie J. Poag <bpoag at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> For years, I tried to open a dialogue that
> simply asked the GNOME and KDE development communities to stop and think
> about what they were building in the larger sense.

Ah, now I remember why I unsubscribed from the Gnome lists back in the
late 90's...  :)

You're totally right about UI design. Ease of use and happiness with
something comes from getting the results you expect when you take
actions that are congruent with other actions. This can mean limiting
choice and forcing designers to toe the line on UI design.

To use the human analogy, that slightly psycho friend who acts
unexpectedly at times may be fun to hang out with once in a while, but
someone dependable who keeps their word is better to rely on, if
somewhat more boring.

OS X is the king of this, because the marketplace forces developers to
stick with the platforms conventions.  "Not Mac Like" is the kiss of
death to a program.   Mac users are also pedantic about this stuff -
witness the recent (and recurrent) fluff up in the mac blogosphere
about extending a selection of items in a list with the mouse vs
keyboard.

For those of you not into this, the best example I can give is this:
Imagine if perfectly functioning programs that deviated from UI
standards were thrown out of your Linux distro because they're "Not
Linux Like".

- Zack