New, refactored System Settings
A rather big change has gone into KDE’s SVN recently: Ben Cooksley (bcooksley) and Mathias Soeken (msoeken) have committed a complete rework of System Settings.
Compared to the previous implementation, System Settings now has two operational modes, one being the current icon-based view since KDE 4 (and also seen in Kubuntu prior to KDE 4), and a second view, named “Classic”, which reimplements the old KControl look and feel. The latter change is probably very welcome to anyone who found System Settings less useful than the old KControl. The current view used can be changed in the configuration options. In addition, upon hovering an icon or module that show if there are any sub-modules associated.
Screenshots are better than words so here goes (click for larger pictures):
What’s more is that by searching you get a nice “highlighted effect” to indicate the match (clearly visible in this icon view screenshot):
Lastly, the about screen:
The best about this new System Settings implementation is that it was born thanks to the KDE Community Forums. A thread posted on January 29th about a KControl port was what started the collaboration between bcooksley (one of the forum admins) and msoeken (Kourse mentor on the forums). And that is the – remarkable – result: input from the community that was converted into actual code which ended up in KDE’s SVN. The two worlds are closer now.
Good news, at least now everybody is happy ! Personally I like icon view. I feel proud that I’m a member in kdeforum :)
Not bad i guess :)
I don’t think that the UI should show a term like “sub modules”. The modularity is an implementation detail that is unknown and should stay unknown to the user.
Use something non-technical, like “category”.
The search option is very important, since there are so many things to configure. This also means that you do not find e.g. setting up the screensaver or your keyboard, because you do not know in which category it is in. Therefore it would be very important, that the word screensaver/keyboard would highlight the right category. A suggestions list while you type in your query makes things much easier.
A good example is the MAC system preferences
Yes, I probably shouldn’t use non technical terms. Unfortunately category doesn’t really fit so I am now using ‘items’ until I can think of something better.
@mannequinZOD: The correct category is already highlighted if it contains a module that matches either by name or keywords your search terms.
Suggestions could be possible in 4.4, but it would only include keywords / module names.
Really nice! Although I prefer the icon based view, this finally closes the discussions whether the KDE3 approach was better than the KDE4 approch.
One minor thing: Is there really the need to add the “About” entry into the toolbar? I know we don’t have a menu here, but moving this information invokable with a button into the configuration dialog would reduce the clutter.
In general i like the icon view pretty much. What I never quite understood is the separation between the “General” and “Advanced” tab. I would rather like to have everything on the same tab (no tabs at all).
Another thing which has confused me several times is the part “Look & Feel”. The difference between “Appearance”, “Desktop” and “Window Behavior” is unclear to me. I would actually expect Desktop effects to be under “Window behavior” rather then “Desktop”. Also changing the wallpaper or desktop behavior is missing in the desktop part.
I have also to say that I really like the direction KDE4 has taken! Keep on rocking guys. I try my best to contribute as much as I can without being a hacker. (I hope to have some extra time for that in a few months.)
@PeterPenz: The about button is quite small ( compared to the default text… ) and I think that moving it into the configuration dialog doesn’t really make sense ( I wouldn’t look in configure for “about”… )
Pointless! and pain in the ass to maintain I guess. Icon view is a modern approach and thus why I think the old “operational mode” should be scrapped. Isn’t that one of the reasons why you’ve rewritten KDE on the first place? Now you’re turning clear settings interface again to something that is cluttered and ugly. Don’t try to please everybody who can’t cope with change!
@Tom: No, it is not pointless. People should have a choice ( when you are looking for a precise module the icon view can be a real pain when you can’t remember its category) and it is not going to be scrapped. And Btw, it isn’t hard to maintain and is quite small actually.
Great, I have never liked icons-based view. Please don’t listen to Mr. There-Is-Only-One-Right-Way, he must be a GNOME-er. :)
> @PeterPenz: The about button is quite small ( compared to
> the default text… ) and I think that moving it into the
> configuration dialog doesn’t really make sense ( I
> wouldn’t look in configure for “about”… )
The size of the button will differ from language to language and can get very huge.
With all my deepest respect to all involved developers: From a users point of view it is irrelevant who wrote the configuration dialogs. Having an about dialog in applications is a no-brainer, as we have a “Help -> About Xxx” menu and it adds no clutter to the primary UI.
Here it adds clutter with having no benefit for the user. We investigated so much energy in KDE 4 to get clean toolbars and a generally cleaner layout. Now we slowly start to repeat KDE 3 mistakes again :-(
From my point of view it should not be necessary to argument why the “About” button should disappear from the toolbar, the argumentation should go the other way: Why has it been added at all (it was not there in KDE 3 and KDE 4.2)?
@Ben Cooksley, @Dmitriy Taychenachev: following your logic we shall have system settings kde2 and kde1 style as well. I’m sure there’s few users out there who’d love to have those. Who told you that people want to have a choice? It’s not true, neither you nor me are regular users, mases don’t want to have a choice.
@Tom: I don’t think this will cause any trouble, and besides, before this refactor, systemsettings was essentially unmaintained. This is certainly a step in the right direction.
Please don’t try to put “non-technical” terms everywhere. It will only confuse technical people, which i think is the main audience of KDE and linux (hands down, it *is*. Non-tech geeks will just grab windows). I like to read “module” instead of “category” or something. Personally, “category” would seem to mean a group of modules to me. So a module would be one such config panel, while a category would be such a tab with icons on it.
In that gist, “module” seems to be a good choice.
@Einar: with all the respect to the work you put into it, I disagree ;-) It is not going to change anything I still love KDE .. maybe bit less now.
Seriously, in my opinion squashing bugs and polishing present interface is far superior, at this stage of KDE development, to the flood of unnecessary new features.
Give you an example why, here where I work got about 40 PCs on which I was allowed to put Linux based OS of my choice. Favored and then tested Kubuntu for a week. Result – not ready for the production! Why? From many bugs I’ve reported none has been sorted. But wait, we’re close to 25 thousandth desktop effect, and still basic things like opening folder with corporate number of files in dolphin make whole system unresponsive.
Cheers
@ Tom : if there is conceptually new way of visualising the configuration tree and some group of people likes it, i think there should be no objections to include implementation in kde. afair kde2 (unfortunately i have never used kde1) uses tree view, so there is nothing really new and making a different view to resemble kde2’s tree is an overkill.
@Tom: I didn’t do anything. As per post, it’s the work of msoeken and bcooksley. I’m merely the messenger spreading the news.
I agree with Peter (which again I thank for the giant work with Dolphin :). That “About” button in the main toolbar is just a gift to the ego of the developers and screams for usability vengeance. It’s something no one is going to click more than once (_if_ they do click once) and it just clutters a window which has already got dozen of icons. So, please remove it.
You totally missed Celeste’s whole set of blog posts about what was wrong with the system settings menu in the first place (e.g. place of that huge horizontal line under each title). Surprised that hasn’t been addressed yet. Seems like KDE developers are missing all the constructive feedback their own HIG experts are providing. Good job.
@all: If you disagree, state it politely (“gift to an ego of the developers” being not a good example).
@Anonymous: Ben is actually *seeking* help from kde-usability people (check kde-core-devel archives).
Also, I have to remind again that I’m merely presenting the work of others. If you think something may be improved, file a bug report (or if it’s a new idea, using the KDE Brainstorm may be preferable).
@anonymous: As far as I know, that line is drawn by KCategorizedView and is not specific to System Settings.
Regarding the About button, I agree with Peter from a user’s point of view. Not only does it take up place, it is also quite confusing as the icon makes it look like a “configure” button.
Finally, just a small thing (I don’t think I wrote it in the forum): make the text non-bold for submodules in the tooltip. I think it would look much nicer that way. :)
What exactly does the new ‘classic’ view provide that the old one couldn’t ? As long as there aren’t any arguments that go beyond ‘personal preference’ there’s no reason to make the software more complex than necessary. If on the other hand the icon view really has some usability problems, then these issues should be fixed right away, so that all users can use it. There’s hardly any point in having two separate views, both of them essentially broken, so that the users can choose which one is the least annoying to them
If you want a benchmark for well done interface design, then look for Apple (search feature) and not Microsoft (classic and XP view in systemsettings). The question is not how to include more options, so that everyone can create his individual custom configuration. It’s rather about removing unnecessary clutter and unused options to keep things clear and easy to use. If the interface is coherent and convincing, most people simply forget to miss their favourite feature..
I am stunned. After all that whining about the old KControl having disappeared, we now get whining about how this was supposedly wasted time. You people are all idiots, seriously! If you disagree, please comment in ways that are constructive, appreciative, or at least halfway kind.
The only thing this proves is that there is a small group of mindless fucks who come out of their basement to troll when they dislike something. They do not come out to defend positive change (which now – supposedly – has been wasted due to additional features, what kind of logic is that?), nor to praise accomplishments. I think this clearly vindicates Aaron who had to take lots of criticism and personal assaults and thus restricted comments on his blog. It’s a rather sad state of affairs.
I wish the F/OSS community would be louder when it comes to appreciation. I, for one, am very thankful for the hard work and the many KDE developers and contributors devote to the system I use and enjoy. If more of us would post a kind note of appreciation here and there from time to time, how wonderful would the F/OSS world be?
Thanks to Ben and Mathias for this addition and for adopting System Settings. This work is highly appreciated… by many who don’t speak up.
@mutlu: Although your point makes much sense, please refrain from using the f- word here.
Great news!
I do not like the icon view of KDE4 very much. It is ok if you know what you want and where to find it (and it is not _that_ important. More important is that you have all the settings and they do work). It is really bad to just click or search through all categories IMHO. You click an icon and to go back you have to move the mouse up to the back-button and then down again to the next icon. Also the changing content of the window (the icons disappear when clicking one) makes things harder to get an overview.
Also the two tabs in the icon view is a bad thing. It makes it difficult to get an overview about all icons, too. When searching you have to look in both tabs if there is a result or not. Why not put the advanced groups below all others on the same page?
I am really happy to see the kcontrol style again in one of the next KDE versions. Only one thing to remark: The tooltip of which submodules can be find in a folder is somehow superfluous in the kcontrol view. You can open and close the folder fast enough to not need such a tooltip help. This IMHO shows the advantage of the kcontrol style against the icon view. In the icon view you do need such a help to get an overview.
And regarding the detail of settings: Put as much settings as possible into KDE. If one wants less he/she can use gnome where the user does not have so many choices or have to use a much more confusing gconf-editor GUI.
But certainly the some settings could be rearranged in a better view. e.g. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57814
@ anonymous: The bug isn’t system settings, it is kdelibs where the change needs to be made.
@Vide @PeterPenz: The about button is present so that hopefully people will file bugs aganist the module not aganist system settings. I recieved 3 new bug reports and all were for modules.
@daniel: People have a right to choice, they shouldn’t be restricted by what some person thinks is good everyone has different workflows. What you propose sounds like GNOME..
@Hans: I agree that it needs a new icon, and making the submodules non bold sounds good as well.
@Ben Cooksley: System Settings Panel, in fact, is the place where you as a developer decide for the user, once. Nobody gives a damn about different looks of the System Setting Panel. It’s a System Setting Panel nothing more. System Setting Panel version KDE 3.x will not be used by majority of the KDE 4.x users – ever! Do yourself a favor and revert the commit, you’ll save time spend on maintaining System Setting Panel version KDE 3.x in KDE 4.x for 5ish die hard KDE 3.x people out there. Do community a favor and use that time by making, not that bad to date, present System Setting Panel perfect.
@Tom: Such comments are not tolerated here. You should show at least a decent level of respect when addressing people, Internet or not. Either you retract or reconsider your post, or I’ll have to delete it.
Nobody was actively seeking the help from the usability people. I’m subscribed to kde-usability and I can’t remember any e-mail regarding System Settings in the last few months.
Here’s the little HIG review about System Settings: http://weblog.obso1337.org/2008/system-settings-as-a-design-lesson/
BTW: IIRC there was a problem regarding Python-based modules in the “old” System Settings. Did you address that issue?
@Einar: You got the wrong vibe mate ;-) Seriously, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my comment. I very much appreciate and respect @Ben Cooksley and his work. It’s just the way I speak sometimes, at least when I care.
@Ben
“People have a right to choice, they shouldn’t be restricted by what some person thinks is good everyone has different workflows”
Users don’t *want* to have a right of choice, they use the system to get work done and expect that the designers have made sane decisions for them. In my opinion this is what usability should be all about: Saving the user (me, mom, rms) from having to worry about all the details
“What you propose sounds like GNOME..”
You won’t get rid of me that easy ;)
Greetings,
Thank you for providing this Option for those like myself who do not like the Standard layout.
Z.
What I really like about the system settings (and kcontrol) is the search. Way better than to memorize everyting :)
@Tom/daniel, I don’t mean to be rude but your kind of attitude really puts me off… Who the hell give you the right to spout claims such as “Users don’t *want* to have a right of choice”. *I am a user and I want to choose*. See how easy it was to disprove that point? When we agree on that, *then* we can (rationally) discuss the reasons in favor or against restoring the old view, and whether we think it should be included or not. But nobody gets to stand on a (pretend) higher ground and preach his opinions as if they were speaking the one and only truth.
If you really want to support you point perhaps you should instead be trying to persuade people by explaining the virtues of the icon view. Personally, I don’t have much against it, besides the clumsy (but tolerable) navigability. I think the main problem has always been the arbitrariness of the categories, and that will be shared by both views. Nevertheless, I miss the great searching capabilities of the old KControl (highlighting modules is ok, but IMO, nowhere near displaying a list with results that can take you to the corresponding config page when clicked). I’m not sure this change restores that though…
A bit offtopic but, anyone knows what happened to the work that had already been done to address the Icon View issues pointed by Celeste?
@Einar: sorry, I didn’t mean to sound harsh, I just wanted to make my point clear (and loud :P). Sorry if I gave that impression.
@Ben: if you’re looking for bug reports, then enable it (or even a clearer “report bug” option” but just for the dev/beta/testing time, not for release.
Good work! Nice to see that KDE forum ideas get implemented :). Congratulation to all people involved.
About something slightly different: if I remember correctly, there was a work going on in order to improve the usability of the icon view following a comment by Celest L. Paul regarding the title of the categories (the problem was related to the placement of the line with regard to the category caption in KCategorizedView, http://www.ereslibre.es/?p=173 for reference). It seemed to me that it was supposed to go into KDE 4.3. However, I do not see the changes on these screenshots. Do you know if it is still planned for 4.3?
thanks for the new choice. I also think, that an about button is max. used one time and makes no sense.
I am the same opinion as FreeMinded about the separation of modules like “Desktop”, “Windows-behaviour”,.. you have to test more than one of the icons to find the setting what you are searching for.
@saphir: ereslibre had a complete lack of time to work on such things, or anything KDE related. Also, the rest of systemsettings was essentially unmaintained, at least until bcooksley and msoeken stepped in.
@Sergio
“I am a user and I want to choose”
Why ?
You mentioned that you never really bothered the icon view, so I had guessed that could have lived just fine without having an alternative. This all sounds like having a choice just for the sake of it, which is rarely a good argument when it comes to adding a feature
“If you really want to support you point perhaps you should instead be trying to persuade people by explaining the virtues of the icon view”
The only reason I like the icon view is that it looks way nicer to me. Other than that I really couldn’t care less how the systemsettings are organized – at least as long as I can still find my way through it
I am not pro icon view
“I think the main problem has always been the arbitrariness of the categories, and that will be shared by both views”
That’s just the point I am trying to make: The new view doesn’t solve the problems that the icon view might have. So instead of implementing another view that really has the same problems, we should have tried to pin down the issues in the old view
A while ago when the cashew dicussion started get out of control aseigo wrote a blog entry that reflects on this idea (aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/03/fixing-versus-working-around-problems.html) and I am really gratefull that you (as the first poster on this blog) have now named a few of the issues:
“clumsy (but tolerable) navigability”
“highlighting modules is ok, but IMO, nowhere near displaying a list”
“arbitrariness of the categories”
Why have these issues not been addresses ?
Instead we now have a “fork” of the system settings dialog that does mostly the same in a slightly different way. And while my views on usability might be controversial, I do hope we all agree that code duplication is a bad thing..
@daniel: There is no fork, nor duplication. This System Settings implementation replaced the old one, completely.
@daniel: “The only reason I like the icon view is that it looks way nicer to me.” Yes, this is the point. The icon view just looks nicer because the icons are bigger. But in my first post here I gave some contras against this view and some pro arguments for the kcontrol style. I think the kcontrol style is much better to handle the settings from user’s point of view.
So if KDE only wanted to offer one version of the system settings, the icon view should be dropped. Because many people would start crying about this (only because it does look nicer?) it is a good way to offer both versions and the user can choose what he wants. This is AFAIU the way KDE handles different opinions about desktop behaviours. You can choose what you like. And this is why I like KDE.
(Sorry for my bad English btw. This makes arguing much more difficult. I hope you understand my points anyway.)
Interesting. some people here seem to fall over the old setting that’s now re-implemented in KDE 4. That in a way isn’t bad at all for the sake of freedom to choose what you want to use. I won’t go deeper into this since i don’t really mind it being implemented yes or no.
The thing i do mind is the fact that the blue sub module popup/balloon/whatever you call it just seems plain ugly to me. Surely there must be a better way to implement that and certainly not something in VISTA colors! at least make a border around the popups.
heh. all this drama over giving users a choice… I hope people don’t complain like this over my soc project, which will bring plasma closer to feature-parity with 3.5’s desktop :P
I don’t use systemsettings, anyways. I might, now that it has treeview again, but I find the systemsettings plasmoid works better for me than the 3.5 treeview did. (it’s actually a config option in the traditional application launcher, so it doesn’t show up in the add-widgets dialog. horrible for discoverability)
Hi,
I think this is a great idea – good job! KDE is all about empowering users to make their own choices.
Perhaps instead of having an “about” button though, you could have a link to “help” instead, with “about” a link within the help dialog.
Also, I wish that distros like suse and mandriva would stop recreating the wheel and could place their config options into system settings (which they could improve with interface ideas from yast and/or mandriva control center) rather than rolling their own implementation that overlaps with system settings.
@Tom: “following your logic we shall have system settings kde2 and kde1 style as well”
As far as I remember, KDE 1 and KDE 2’s kcontrol were really like the one in KDE 3, just theme/icon differences.
Proof:
http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/images/kde-1.1.2-kcontrol.jpg
http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/images/kde-2.2.1-kcontrol-desktop-small.jpg
Btw, I like the old kcontrol is back now :-)