Remote Worskpace-Switcher Default Panel Config

Lionel Dricot (aka Ploum) zeploum at gmail.com
Wed Aug 10 02:32:08 CDT 2005


I have some experience with very newbie users. My mother, my father,
my old uncle and some very old people. (I've learned how to use a
computer to a 86 years old woman !)


The "taskbar" is the worst thing for those people. They don't
understand at all what it means. If a window is minimized, they don't
see any difference with "closed". The taskbar thing is really really
difficult. (it's not my theory, it's what I've seen for those people).

My father use a computer in his job since 1990. He doesn't understand
what the taskbar is. It takes me a while to understand that he *can't*
understand this.

When I switched my parents to Linux, two years ago, I expected to
remove the virtual desktop switcher. Too complex. I was thinking just
what has been said here.

But I toke a few minutes to explain virtual desktop to my mother. She
understood it very quickly. surprise ! Even my father understood it
without any problem. When I explain this to old people (I say old
people because, most of the time, they are people never exposed to MS
Windows), there is no problem at all.

Why ? Because it's really intuitive to understand the concept : you
have four little desktop. You can *see* windows on those desktop
altought it's tiny. You can grep the concept, unlike taskbar who is
just a "windows-isme" without any intuition behind.

IMHO, virtual desktops are just a problem for people used to MS
Windows. But what do we want for Ubuntu ?  A system easy for windows
switcher or easy for human people ? We, computer's geek for most of
us, are too used to windows-like world. We often forget things that
are not intuitive for new users. (simple example : there's no
consistent way to know if you must double-click or single click in
windows. It's awful. And Gnome behaviour follows this tradition...)

So, following my experience :

1) Virtual desktop is not a problem as long as you briefly describe
it. So we must keep it.
2) If we must change something, we must get rif of the taskbar, not
the virtual desktop.


That's my 2 eurocents ;-)

Have a good day,

Lionel


On 10/08/05, Corey Burger <corey.burger at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have to agree with Jeff and Matthew on this one. As much I think
> virtual desktops are on the most useful features of Ubuntu and that
> most people can figure them out, they have serious issues with
> discoverabilty I can imagine the panicked phone calls from my
> step-mother "Where did my program go!!!!"
> 
> So with much regret, I vote for it go.
> 
> Corey
> 
> --
> ubuntu-devel mailing list
> ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
>



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