Well, I've tried GNOME 3 now...

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2011-04-22 at 11:57 -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:54:03 +0100
> mike cloaked wrote:
> 
> > > You could try just learning a bit about it before writing it off
> > > forever.
> > 
> > I think Gnome3 has the potential to work very well but it is new and
> > it is a learning curve.
> 
> But for months now they've been telling us this new design was
> made for new users who don't want to learn about computers and
> just want a desktop that works.
> 
> Does this model of the "typical user" the devs seem to imagine
> exists come with a deep desire to research everything on google in
> order to be able to use the desktop?

You don't have to do that. It works fine without knowing any of the
shortcuts. And if you're a new user you don't have any in-built
expectations for how fast you'll be able to do something or exactly how
to perform a given operation, so you won't be frustrated that it's
taking 'longer than it did before' or that it doesn't work the same way.

It's only people who are coming from an existing desktop - like GNOME 2
- for which they already know all the shortcuts who are getting
frustrated, because they've changed, and now some of that knowledge you
built up doesn't apply any more, and you know you 'should' be able to do
certain things faster (because you could before) but you don't know how
to (because the shortcuts have changed).

Let me give you an illustration...I went snowboarding this morning. The
conditions were pretty crappy and I wasn't really feeling it so I just
decided to go to the bunny hill and try and learn to ride switch (that
is, the opposite way around to how I normally do it - for me, with my
right foot at the front instead of my left).

When I first learned to snowboard, it took me hours just to learn to
make a turn without falling on my ass - and I was having fun the whole
time, because I was learning something new and it was cool and awesome.

Trying to ride switch is more or less like learning again from scratch,
because everything is switched around and you don't have the balance and
reflexes you figured out with all that learning. So you have to do it
all again. But it's not anywhere near as much fun; it just feels
frustrating and embarrassing, because all the time you're thinking 'man,
I know exactly how I SHOULD be able to do this, but instead I'm falling
on my ass the whole time'. It's way, way worse than just learning from
scratch. It still took me hours to make turns without falling on my ass,
and the whole time I was thoroughly pissed off, not enjoying myself like
I was when I first learned.

Well, I hope that kinda makes sense. It did to me, anyway. =)

> The icons
> are still all blown up about 100 times larger than they were
> designed for so they all mostly just look like amorphous blobs
> of random color unless you scoot back a few feet from the screen.

All GNOME apps should have icons that look reasonable up to 256x256 now.
Many other apps do too (Firefox and Transmission, for instance). Other
apps should get their icons up to scratch over time.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net