Normally I would not reply to a thread after a decision has been done. I do it
nevertheless to point out a mistake with the proposal in general. This is to
show you where to improve in future when discussion changes of defaults.
On Sunday 15 January 2012 15:13:51 Darrell Anderson wrote:
> > I quite agree. That's why centered is *not* a useful
> > placement strategy. It
> > requires users to move their windows to have it useable.
> > This is the worst
> > thing which could happen.
>
> Not really. I have used Centered for years. Here is a difference: I
> configure most apps to open maximized. Those few that I open in
> non-maximized mode typically get opened for a few moments and then closed.
> So for me, Centered is useful.
Here we have an important piece of information: you changed your settings to
use placement strategy centered *and* configured most apps to open maximized.
So what you are using is in fact a "Maximized or Centered" placement strategy
which does not exist. Changing the default option does not yield in your
desired behavior.
This means in order to really use your proposed default settings users would
have to change either other options or more defaults would have had to be
changed.
Now during the discussion it was not clear to me that you want further
changes. My argumentation was around the placement strategy "centered" which
has clear disadvantages. I pointed you to them and asked you to try centered
as a placement strategy for a few days (of course I considered this with other
default settings and not your own settings) and I also asked you to think not
from your point of view. Here I'm sorry you clearly failed as you did not even
notice that you had further changes. You need to try to think how the system
behaves for the user. This is difficult and needs training :-)
So for future proposals I suggest you to first really try it with default
settings. A good way to do that is to create a new user account. Also try to
not propose the things you use if you have a highly configured system.
Defaults have to be good for a large user base. It is impossible to find
defaults which are perfect for all. That's quite an important lesson to learn:
you cannot write software to suit all users needs. People are different and
that's great. So the best default is hardly the one which works perfect for a
subgroup of your userbase, but most likely the option which sucks least for
all users is the best one. It's not nice, but especially on defaults it's
important to find a good compromise. Also never tailor towards the needs of
advanced users. They are advanced users, they find the settings ;-)
Also on an unrelated note: you talked a lot about usability studies and
demanded them from me who was in favor of the existing default. Now this is of
course completely wrong. You want the default to be changed, so it's your duty
to deliver the usability study as a proof to your case.
Cheers
Martin Gr��lin
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