Introduction, questions

[John Richard Moser]

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Alistair Davidson wrote:
> Hi there.
> 
> I'm interested in getting involved in Ubuntu development. I've got no
> experience in putting together distributions or packaging, but I'm a
> programmer -I'm teaching myself to use Glade at the moment- and a
> layman's expert on usability. I've previously been involved in the KDE
> Usability project, I can't claim to have contributed much there but I
> learned an awful lot (some of it about how not to do things, but that's
> another rant...).
> 

KDE is the embodiment of how not to do things.  Honestly I hope either
the KDE project or the Qt toolkit dies, because it really gets on my
nerves that some programs are Qt and look different.  When I tried to
use KDE, I was consistently annoyed that the GTK apps didn't fit into
the environment.

> I've tried a few different distros over the years looking for one that
> was usable enough that it seemed it could be turned into something truly
> great (ie equal to or better than an Apple interface :o) )

. . . I guess the apple interface thing is hard to argue with.  Every
major apple enthusiest I know (i.e. people who think any non-MacOS UI is
very poorly designed) has an IQ below the room temperature in celcius.


> , and Ubuntu
> is the first I've seen- you've even converted me to Gnome. Great work
> folks! I also like the commitment to free software.
> 
> So, where would I be useful? I have particular interest in developing
> tools to help the user manage their system, fixing interface problems,
> and conducting zero-budget usability studies (ie I get friends, family,
> friends-of-friends etc, and fill out forms to record everything). I
> don't have the space to install the latest cvs, unfortunately, though of
> course I could keep cvs versions of specific programs.
> 
> While I'm emailing anyway, one issue I feel I have to red flag (sorry if
> it's been discussed/fixed already), which I think is really a Gnome
> issue- there are many tasks that only seem accomplishable by using the
> right-click menu, including ejecting CDs! Like I say sorry if it's fixed
> but this problem was enough to confuse me for a good ten seconds, my
> grandfather never would have worked it out, and other than that I'd like
> to get him using Ubuntu because it is better than Windows in the main.
> 

Context menus are a great UI tool.  The user looks at what he wants to
do something to, then gets a list of things to do to it, then does it.
icons in menus are also a major enhancement, because you can more
readily recognize a picture from a list than a word.

- --
All content of all messages exchanged herein are left in the
Public Domain, unless otherwise explicitly stated.

    Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be
    wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating
    new problems waiting out there.
                                                 -- Eric Steven Raymond
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