Activate Desktop-Effects: Yes/No-Button?

[Waldemar Kornewald]

Was my mail cut in the middle?

On 9/27/07, Waldemar Kornewald <wkornew at freenet.de> wrote:
> Hi, (resending... why do mails not get to the ML, automatically?)
>
> On 9/27/07, Dominik Wagenfuehr <dominik.wagenfuehr at deesaster.org> wrote:
> > PS: And yes, I know that you can deactivate Compiz with a few clicks,
> > but why do not let the user decide?
>
> Even without that question the user can still decide: Just deactivate Compiz. ;)
>
> But you already mentioned the main reason yourself: Most users are
> happy with Compiz being enabled. Do you want to annoy all of them with
> a question just to make a minority of users happy? With that reasoning
> we could easily expand this to 1000 questions, letting the user choose
> everything...
>
> Contrary to what some people make us belive, many consumers don't even
> want to have a lot of choice in *all* situations of their life (there
> have been studies on the negative psychological effects of too much
> choice in our modern world). The stereotypical view "choice = good, no
> choice = bad" is not as black&white as many people seem to believe.
> There is something between "lots of choice" and "no choice" and, as
> you said, most people prefer a shiny interface over a boring one. In
> some countries (esp. the USA) the ridiculous equation "choice =
> freedom" has emerged (and sometimes basically "enslaved" us), but it's
> too simple to capture the real meaning behind it which is something
> similar to: "freedom+happyness" means to have the *possibility* to
> choose and then get what you want.
>
> From a different point of view, "freedom" means the freedom to *NOT*
> have to choose and not be bothered with choice unless we choose to
> have choice (I hope this makes it clear that the issue is more complex
> than some might think ;).
>
> In this case, this is only guaranteed if you don't ask the user and
> let those who want to disable Compiz just do that.
>
> I hope this will some day become a philosophy in the open-source world
> (it's only a small, but important step towards better usability).
> Ideally, we'd only be presented with *essential* choice and then have
> something like a search interface for getting a list of options for
> *anything* when we want that choice.
>
> Regards,
> Waldemar Kornewald