Who is working on the Trisquel 8 theme? (Asking again)

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t3g
t3g
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A rejoint: 05/15/2011

Since Trisquel 8 is using MATE, that means the look could be similar to the Gnome 2 versions if the themes from the 4.x and 5.x releases are used and updated. Who is working on the look for T8!? I'd love to see pics of how it's looking at this point.

hack and hack
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A rejoint: 04/02/2015

Oh it's mate then? That means the related issues are probably dealt with.
Well, gnome-shell is a few clics away. But I gladly admit that the out-of-the-box gnome-shell experience is not intuitive.

loldier
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A rejoint: 02/17/2016

'Intuitive' usually means 'like Windows 95'. Gnome 3 is only different.

Jef Raskin: "I suggest that we replace the word "intuitive" with the word "familiar"..."

http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html

hack and hack
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A rejoint: 04/02/2015

Precision is important, so I'll say familiar instead then, thanks. And thanks for the link as well, very interesting.

My point still remains: as much as I enjoy gnome-shell, I think the stock experience should be (a bit) more familiar to gain a wider audience.

All it takes is a couple of plugins installed by default. I'm thinking of the drop-down menu (I don't remember the names), and a dock. Job done. Maybe one or two more, but that's mostly it.

loldier
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A rejoint: 02/17/2016

Raskin again:"But if superior, it cannot be the same, so it must be different (typically the greater the improvement, the greater the difference). Therefore it cannot be intuitive, that is, familiar."

Gnome 3 is superior to Mate winning hands down. The question is do we want familiarity or improvements?

hack and hack
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A rejoint: 04/02/2015

Depends on the goal I'd say.
My take is the flagship of the distro should definitely show improvements, but still a tiny bit of familiarity. As you can see, it doesn't take much to do so with Gnome 3.
It matters because to me, one of the main points is reaching new users. And you know what is said about first impressions.

I personally think that choosing Mate is a mistake. Gnome 3 with a couple of familiar plugins on by default is most likely best in most cases for the aforementioned reasons.
All Mate has is being lighter on resources, and I'm not sure it's by far. Plus that's what Trisquel mini is for.

Plus those who need it can make Gnome 3 function just like Mate (gnome-classic if I remember correctly). That's what allowed Red Hat to stay with Gnome.

pragmatist

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A rejoint: 03/03/2016

It would be great if we could get information from new users. For instance, if there were some kind of public event and people can walk by our 'table' and try GNOME 3 or try MATE. Like the old taste test commercials with coke and pepsi! Otherwise, the very fact that some people here like one and some people like the other is evidence that we don't know what a good default is. If you can truly remember your first days with GNU/Linux and bring that to bear, that is another story. It seems to me that these discussions are ultimately about what DE do we like better for ourselves.

lembas
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A rejoint: 05/13/2010

I think this would be a good idea as the default has to be for new users. Once people get more familiar with the system they can customize the user interface to their liking. On the other hand people confuse usable with familiar as pointed out in this thread...

pragmatist

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A rejoint: 03/03/2016

Exactly! I remember back in the day when I read Jakob Nielsen's books on usability for websites, when I learned two main things:
1.) Designers/developers/CEOs find it difficult to turn the focus from what they want, to what users want.

2.) To truly understand usability requires research. We all like to think that what is usable should be obvious to us--after all, we are users too. It is not obvious, because we have an agenda. We are trying to figure out what the general public likes using only our self-selected group of Trisquel users.

Granted, we weren't always Trisquel or GNU/Linux users, but we are now and that is the point; We were willing to invest some time in a learning curve. That may or may not be an acceptable curve for the general public. We don't know how many people tried to take up Trisquel or GNU/Linux and gave up because it was too much effort for them. We may be satisfied if we reduce the curve below what we had to learn. But since we don't know how much more of a learning curve we would accept compared to the general public, we don't know how and how much to reduce it.

We need to know what they think is usable, not what we think is usable.

Until then, these discussions degrade down (hopefully) to whatever most of us think is usable and then choose that. As long as we can try and imagine how things were when we started, that might not be a terrible second approximation (maybe).

So I see three main approaches:
1) What we like better for ourselves now.
2) What we imagine we would have liked better then.
3) Market research

As far as how to do the research, I don't know. Some sort of show or expo would be one opportunity. There may be sources of research that already exist that can assist us in this. If someone here has experience in this kind of work, they would be ideal to spearhead it.

EDIT: If by familiar are you saying that some strive to make it like MW or MacOS (cursed be their names) to make the transition to Trisquel less painless? I don't think that will work. Some people will say--this is just like MW or MacOS but my printer doesn't work)

No, better is to make an interface that is as excellent as can be from our point-of-view and do research from there to modify it. Give a menu of choices, all better than the two horrid OSes named above, and have users let us know what is the best amongst them.

This is a hybrid solution involving our deciding what we would like best if we were just starting out, and doing market research to see what the public likes among our choices.

hack and hack
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A rejoint: 04/02/2015

true, but if the said usability need a learning curve, even a slight one, it's dissuasive for a new average user.
To me, for this specific audience, usability and familiarity go hand in hand.

pragmatist

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A rejoint: 03/03/2016

Well most people coming to Trisquel are coming from Windows or MacOS, so if you want it familiar to them you'll need to make Trisquel like those other OSes.

Bad idea.

hack and hack
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A rejoint: 04/02/2015

I disagree, there's no need to go too far.
A menu, maybe a dock, that's all that's needed IMO. As long as most basic features commmon to any os are identifiable in some way, it's all good.

pragmatist

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A rejoint: 03/03/2016

"As long as most basic features commmon to any os are identifiable in some way"

Not exactly actionable. Pretty vague. Of course our OS will have some things in common. You were saying that the whole experience should feel familiar. I disagree. The whole experience should be usable. If that means doing some things better than those other OSes, so be it.

But my main point, which you've ignored, is that we need to see what outsiders think. Otherwise we are just making this so that we will like it--an OK strategy, but it won't bring as many people in as possible. Maybe you don't want that.

hack and hack
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A rejoint: 04/02/2015

Why are you so aggressive? Chill.
I ignored your main point because I was answering to lembas, about useability.
If practical, your main point is interesting. Here, happy?
From the start I say that it's wrong to focus only on what we like. What I like the most is neither gnome nor mate.

Why the hell wouldn't I want to bring as many people as possible to Trisquel/free software?? What's wrong with you? Where did I even imply that? Show me, I dare you.
At first I said intuitive. Then, corrected, I said familiar.
Then came usability. And I said that for a specific kind of users, usability goes hand in hand with familiarity to some degree, because steering too far too soon from the familiar usually steer people away. i3wm is super usable after all, would it fit the default Trisquel 8? I doubt it. I rest my case.

As for the rest being pretty vague: a file explorer, a parameters panel, stuff like that. You find that in any OS. That's what I meant.

loldier
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A rejoint: 02/17/2016

I would think that most people come from another GNU/Linux distribution.

pragmatist

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A rejoint: 03/03/2016

Interesting! You are probably right. Personally, even though I've used GNU/Linux for 14 years, I came to Trisquel via rms and GNU. Strictly because of the free software issue.

It would be interesting if somebody posted a thread asking how people came to use Trisquel. Maybe I'll post one in the troll hole.

EDIT: I created this thread https://trisquel.info/en/forum/what-os-were-you-using-when-you-switched-trisquel

t3g
t3g
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A rejoint: 05/15/2011

Wow, no one answered the question. You all suck.

pragmatist

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A rejoint: 03/03/2016

LOL