[TriLUG] Mandrake/Redhat usability.

[Tanner Lovelace]

On Sun, 2002-10-06 at 19:07, Ilan Volow wrote:

> Mandrake's installer uses non-standard, ambiguous star-shaped widgets
> for things like radio buttons and check boxes, uses two shades of blue
> for the foreground and background that have almost no difference in
> contrast, and denotes progress through the installation by whether a
> large, ball shaped list bullet is green or red (which kinds of screws
> over the red-green color-blind people). Or translated from HCIese to
> Geekish, Mandrake's usability really sucks. 

The star shaped widgets have been replaced by circles.  That said,
they need never be touched.  In fact, if people don't recognize them as
buttons, that's perfectly fine.  You don't need to bother them to have
the install work.  They can come in handy, however, for power users
that have unusual needs, which is, btw, just the kind of people
that will recognize them as buttons. :-)  

As far as the side progress indicators are concerned, do you have any
numbers on how many people are red-green color blind *enough so that
the side bar is useless to them*?  Also, like I said
before, the sidebar, while nice, is not integral to the functioning of
the installer.  You can do everything in the installer without having
to worry about the sidebar.

Finally, about the color, I think you exagerate a lot.  Here's an 
example of an install:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/demos/Demo/Mandrake9.0/Install/pages/install8.php3
Yes, it's two shades of blue, but on any decent monitor these days
it's not hard to tell what's what.  In addition, all the text is
white, which shows up very well on blue.  

Just when was the last time you installed Mandrake?  Obviously it
wasn't recently, or else you would have known about the star widgets 
being gone.  If you're going to criticize, please have up to date
information when you do.  Or, alternatively, label your criticism 
as opinion, rather than pontificating like an expert.  I personally
believe Mandrake's usability is much better than that of Redhat, but
since I haven't used any version of Redhat newer than 7.3, that could
have changed with RH8.0.  

Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace at wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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