Bug 58775

if there are more clock styles, you will see more tabs. I don't see what the problem 
is, here. 
 

I agree with the original poster that having more and more horizontal tabs is not the way to go. It 
gets difficult to navigate through all the tabs, as quite some of them get hidden. Also, having a 
General-tab that influences the behaviour of subsequent tabs is not intuitive. Furthermore, e.g. the 
Timezones-tab has no influence on the look of the clock, but it is something different alltogether. 
 
What about having a vertical configuration menu, such as the one used for desktop configuration, 
with one "tab" for the timezones and one for the look/type of the clocks. The look/type of the clocks 
could then be handled similarily to the screensaver configuration tab in the desktop configuration 
window as suggested by the original bug reporter. E.g.: 
 
|----------------- 
| Timezones| 
| Clocks   |  
|          | 
|          | 
----------------- 
 
Thanks for your attention! 
Beat 

Beat Fasel proposals seems one of good ideas.
But (maybe I'll make a mistake) I don't know if vertical tab is better than 
horizontal tab.

Well, with vertical tabs I meant the vertical fields you can chose different modules from, e.g. in the 
desktop configuration preferences you have "Appearance", "Behaviour" ..."Screensaver".  
 
However, for the clock preferences, I propose not to simply convert all horizontal tabs (i.e. General, 
Timezones, Plain Clock ...Fuzzy Clock) into vertical fields, but to re-group them at the same time 
into logical groups. Currently I see Timezones and Clocks Types (as outlined in my last mail) as two 
possible logical groups.  
Within the Clock Type field, you could then choose between digital,analog and fuzzy clock styles, 
similarily to how you can choose different screen savers in the screen saver field of the desktop 
preferences module. 
 
To sum up, the proposed approach would lead to 
(1) more logical grouping of entries (no General-tab that influences other tabs and separation of 
Timezones from the Clock Types field) 
(2) increased usability due to better presentation of the options to the user (less possibly hidden 
tabs to scroll through, more compact representation of parameters) 
 
But I guess that is what Christin meant in her/his original bug report if I understand her/him 
correctly. 
 
Cheers! 
Beat 

Kconsole configuration windows is not bad.
Find a better one or imagine a better one.

Well, I agree that the Konsole configuration window is clearer than the one of 
the clock. However, I don't like too much traditional tabbed configuration 
windows, as this leads to big vertical windows, when many options are 
contained within a tab (e.g. with the Konsole configuration window), or many 
tabs that have to be scrolled through (like with the clock configuration 
window). 
 
More and more KDE applications seem to use vertical configuration windows, 
like the desktop preferences window or e.g. Kcalc configuration window. The 
reason why I like this layout more is, that options are presented from left to 
right and not from top to bottom. Feels more comfortable for me, but it surely 
is a matter of taste. 
 
However, I still feel that the clock pereferences window should be redesigned 
as mentioned earlier in this thread (more compact and improved logical 
grouping of entries). 
 
Beat 

*** Bug 59165 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I agree.

Clicking configure clock yields 6 different tabs for the user of which 4 are
"Plain Clock", "Digital Clock", "Analog Cloc", and "Fuzzy clock" making the
clock configuration dialog way too large for its intended user. Those 4 tabs can
be combine dinto 1 single tab which is simpler to use and takes less screen space.

It could be called "Look" for example. This tab would have at the top a dropdown
menu where the user can select the type of clock, digital, analog, fuzzy or
plain. The options would change depending on the user's selection. This would
also be more efficent because each type of look has many charachteristics in
common for example, all of them have a "Show date" option, and a draw frame option.

Another problem with the clock is the timezone, no I'm not complaining because
it doesen't have that nice map with the selections underneath like XEvolution,
it is just that the timezone options don't fit when most are enabled and you can
not scroll the menu. More on this here: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58948 

Seems like we are not the only ones who find the current implementation of the 
clock preferences dialog confusing. Nat Friedman on differences between the 
KDE and the Gnome desktop, I cite: "KDE has way more options (the clock 
properties dialog has five tabs!) and Windows migrants frequently find this 
confusing, especially people who work in offices." 
See also following link, question 5: 
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3705&page=2 

Further comments of users about the kde clocks preferences can also be found 
in the slashdot article "Interview With Ximian's Nat Friedman": 
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/06/03/1952222.shtml?tid=170&tid=187 

Well, guys... take a look at this, and tell me if I'm on the right track or not (everyone on 
IRC seems to think so): 
 
http://c133.org/files/newclockprefs.png 
http://c133.org/kicker-clock-config.ui (if you want to load it up in Designer and play 
with it yourself... note that the Timezone tab doesn't have its data, since I don't plan 
on changing it much.) 
 
-clee 

I like it :) 

Barring any serious problems with the new config page, this should be in CVS very 
soon. 
 
If anyone wants to talk to me about it, I'm in #kde-devel on irc.freenode.net - feel free 
to /join or /query me :) 

It's better.

The setting options are common to all styles of clock ?
Or is it different for every clock style ?
Clock style can be added via plug-in (or executable,...) ?
Setting windows can be resized ?
OK button and Cancel button are in the normal place (common to all application 
or KDE UI recommandation) ?

The settings options will be dynamically enabled/disabled depending on whether or 
not the clock actually supports each option. 
 
Clock styles currently can't be extended via plugin, as the clock applet itself is a plugin. 
 
The settings window is resizable, but it will also display and be usable on a display as 
low-res as 640x480. 
 
The OK/Cancel buttons are just what Qt Designer threw in there - the actual module 
will have the standard OK/Apply/Cancel buttons that the old dialog has. 
 
-clee 

> "The settings options will be dynamically enabled/disabled depending on 
whether or not the clock actually supports each option."

If the clock applet must be realeased quickly, it's good enough.

But a little more redesign may be necessary. Any propositions ?

Looks good to me =)

I like it too, thanks a lot Chris! 

Question, is there any reason why the Foreground/Background color selection 
buttons in the General-tab are aligned to the right and not to the left? 
 
Thanks! 
Beat 

Hope that will not have problems with international translation (i18n).

Created attachment 1725 [details]
Clock preferences, Color selection aligned to the left

Hey this qt desinger is fun! What about following layout of the clock 
preferences (Foreground/Background color selection aligned to the left)?

Do you know there is a headline in kde news about this wish : 
http://dot.kde.org/1054839700/
What a publicity...
Some comments are interesting...
Bye.

It seems that the main person behind OSnews.com, Eugenia has noticed the KDE
team's effort to improve usability, especially that of the clock and despite the
new proposed clock design, with her keen eye on usability, she quickly noticed a
few small problems.

her mockup for an improved version of Chris's mockup can be found here:
http://img.osnews.com/img/3721/clock.png

From all angles, this looks better and seems more logically structured,
hopefully this design will be adapt it.

I'm also sure many other KDE panels , applications and dialogs suffer from
similar usability problems as the clock and even the new proposed clock design
(before Eugenia's) such as putting "Font:" right before a "choose font" button.

Thanks, and hopefully we will see more of her mockups and maybe a unified UI
guideline for KDE.

Perhaps taking the best parts of these freely available and well known UI
guidelines and creating one for KDE.


http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Essentials/AquaHIGuidelines/index.html
http://developer.apple.com/ue/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28000443
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/design/ui/
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/basics/

IMO, KDE really needs to shift gears to usability, speed and stability rather
than features because GNOME is winning many people over with its usability. Most
users do not need a lot of the advanced features KDE provides and they would
rather have the basics be very very easy to use, currently Linux is still mostly
among power users who know their way well and who don't care too much about
usability, but as it moves towards the masses you will find that KDE will
quickly lose ground unless usability is not greatly improved, such as the dumb
context menus in Konqueror.

Even Eugenia prefers GNOME because of its usability,
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3721 

The new font selectors are very bad, they don't allow to select font size. Now 
I have a digital clock with a date being greater than the time. :-( Also the 
"Apply" button being active seems very random to me (e.g. font selection). 
 
I would have preferred a good rather than a fast "24h" solution. Btw, I'm 
talking about the current CVS and not the initial screenshot shown in dotty 
story. 

Alright, its down to the following top finalists:

http://segfaultskde.berlios.de/other/clock-design/
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/clock1
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/clock.png
http://urbanlizard.com/~aseigo/clockshot.png
http://img.osnews.com/img/3721/clock.png

Out of all these designs, Mr. Seigo's (second to last one) is probably my
favorite especially since it allowsyou to configure shadows.

I am not quite sure how the color selection would work since there is no "use
custom colors" check box. I assume taht when different styles are picked the
colors will be displayed in those color buttons and you can simply modify it,

I also really hope there will be a full fledged font selection dialog like the
one in Kcontrol, which gives you full power. Same should be for chnging fonts
for the desktop icons, tehre should be a full fledged font selection tool like
in Kcontrol.

I also hope that the options in colors wil change for different clock types, for
example when digital is selected instead of plain, I expect the color buttons to
change and instead allow me to configure the stripes.

I hope Mr.Seigo had the same thing in mind that I did. Anyway, I like his design
best and Eugenia/Clee's second best than Christian's third best.

I'd definately vote for one of the last two listed. 
 
http://urbanlizard.com/~aseigo/clockshot.png looks most feature fulled, and is a very nice look, 
but http://img.osnews.com/img/3721/clock.png seems less cluttered and easier to use... I can't 
make up my mind - but both are definately better than the other proposals. 
  
just my 0.02euro 
 

http://urbanlizard.com/~aseigo/clockshot.png

Simple, yet full featured.

Avoiding frames in dialog windows is part of the GNOME HIG v1.0 - see Chapter 6 (  
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/controls.html ) section "Frames and  
seperators". There you can see two versions of a dialog with and without frames. As you will  
see and read there are other (better? more usable!) ways of making groups of controls.  
  
This seems to be well thought out. I vote for the OSNews one. 

I dont agree with Andreas Leuner and feel that frames are a good way of how to 
group controls. The mockup of OSNews feels just feels unorganized. Anyway, I 
don't like the HIG-looks of Gnome. KDE doesn't have to look like Gnome in my 
opinion. I prefer the mockup of Aron Seigo 
(http://urbanlizard.com/~aseigo/clockshot.png). 

Subject: Re:  clock style setting panel is not beautiful

If avoiding frames with borders is a good ui design decisions, then the
example in the Gnome HIG fails to convey the point to me.

I have made few changes.  I like Chris Lee's original suggestion.  I have taken
his ui file and made few small changes.  Here is the result.  Hope the changes
are for the better.

www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~psamra/kicker-clock.png
www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~psamra/kicker-clock.ui

Ok I think we have already far too many designs for this which are very good,
now we just need to pick one.

There's no rush, KDE 3.1 shouldn't ship until at least September.

I personally vote for clee's: I've emailed -core-devel asking for 
discussion/resolution, however. I'll ACCEPT the bug and leave it assigned to 
myself, for simplicity, and declare it RESOLVED when the winner out of the -c-d 
selection gets committed to CVS. 

Based Chris Lee model, for common options, it's OK.
But I don't really like dynamic enabled/disabled for options. I prefer add 
a "detail" (??? I use fench UI)  boutton near clock style for more option 
configuration like MS windows (KDE ?) screensaver select.

Dont't forget a apply button, so applied clock style can be showed quickly.


If there is a discussion about Clock style Preview.
For me : useless... Since there is a apply button and clock applet is easy 
visible 
For others : ??? can't answer for them

Ben Meyer's configuration dialog in CVS is probably good enough; judging by 
the apathy on -core-devel, it seems no-one cares enough about it to have it 
changed. Ah well. 
 
FIXED, imo. 

WHAT THAT ONE COMPLETLEY SUCKS IN COMPARRISON TO THE OTHERS AND IS STILL MISSING
ESSENTIAL FEATURES LIKE CHANGING THE TEXT SIZE!!! I AM VERY VERY DISSAPOINTED IN
THIS DECISION!

Why would you take something bad and just make it a little better when there are
designs 10 times better than that one! What a retarted decision! At least do it
right if your going to change it!!!

Please don't put that in 3.2, jsut check out the other designs, that one was
probably the worst one, I hope this isn't an indication of the general attention
for usability from developers. 

OMFG how could someone pick taht shit when there are such better  choices like
Aaron's or Eugenias! Has the person who comitted this been living under a
fucking rock!

Alex first lets turning of caps . We can read here . And current clock is a work by Aseigo + Clee + 
Benjamin and it doesnt look like Benjamin's first design. So please be nice while adding 
comments.  

Ok sorry, I'm happy now, I thought it was the original one!

It would have been totally stupid to use the original one when so many great
designs far ebtter than Benjamin's have popped up. Also, after Eugenia's
crititcism and mockup it is also obvious that hers is better too.

Anyway, as long as this isn't happening I am very pleased and I would love to
see a screenshot. If it is$$^%& &*@T$&*@&^&$ *&&*^@$ ;) 

Sorry again, a bit ofa  misunderstanding... please erase that post and save me
the embarassment...