Friday, December 17, 2010

Usability

A small observation on usability for today: why do some applications that have a list of recently used files make the list so small?  Many default to nine.  Think how much more useful that list would be if it was longer.  Also, think how simple it would be to make it longer, and how much extra resources (storage space, processing required to render) it would consume.

Alas, I do not have the skills to submit patches to the various projects that could benefit from this idea.  I am but a humble user.  I want to see GNOME succeed. 

My definition of "success" is not to gain significant market share against Windows or MacOS (or anything else).  It is this: to be the most enjoyable human-computer-interface in existence, both for users and developers.

Thank you to all the GNOME hackers for your efforts so far.  They are very much appreciated by me, and I guess quite a few (hundred of thousands, or millions) of people throughout the world who are not programmers but who merely want to use their devices to do stuff.

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