[519] in Athena User Interface
Re: minutes of 14dec2000 micromeeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Susan B. Jones)
Fri Dec 15 14:30:25 2000
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In-Reply-To: <200012151913.OAA00916@multics.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 14:30:21 -0500
To: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@mit.edu>, "t. belton" <tbelton@mit.edu>
From: "Susan B. Jones" <sbjones@MIT.EDU>
Cc: "andrew m. boardman" <amb@mit.edu>, aui@mit.edu, tibbetts@mit.edu
So is this a worthwhile thing to do as part of the usability test or is it
unnecessarily dangerous?
Is theme an Athena thing? a UNIX thing? a Gnome thing? Is it something
that your run-of-the-mill Athena user knows about?
Susan
At 2:13 PM -0500 12/15/2000, Richard Tibbetts wrote:
>On 12/15 "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU> wrote:
>> A "theme" is just a change of appearance, that's all. Actually there are
>> two different ways the system uses the word "theme"; GNOME has one, which
>> affects the way it draws buttons and other controls, and sawfish has one
>> of its own which affects the way the window frame, title bar, and window
>> controls are drawn. That's the one I want the user to try to change.
>
>Delurking to correct a possible misconception:
>
>A theme is not just a change of appearance, it is often a dramatic
>change in functionality. For instance by only changing the theme one
>can make sawfish look *and feel* like MacOS or Windows. Themes not
>only change what the frames, titlebars and titlebar buttons look like,
>they also change what they do, often introducing or removing
>significant functionality.
>
>Its possible everyone was clear on that, but I thought I would make
>sure. When choosing a default theme aestetics should really be a
>secondary consideration, after easy to understand functionality. Many
>(most) sawfish themes have so many different ways to do things that
>the user can easily be confused (e.g. "The window is gone. Did I unmap
>it, window shade it, iconify it, move it to another desktop, or
>something else?").
>
>tibbetts
>
>-*- http://www.mit.edu/~tibbetts -*- finger tibbetts@monk.mit.edu -*-
