Re: [Bug-gnubg] GNOMEify the user interface?

[Michael Petch]

I have been giving this some thought as well. Cross Platform is ideal
(but not always possible). But I wonder - Should we first consider
*designing* a GUI that is user friendly. My point would be - GnuBG has
been evolving, however the User Interface is very adhoc. In some cases I
even have a hard time what I am looking for on the menus, or in the
multitude of preference screens.

My Question is this. Who are we defining as our target audience now.
Power Users (Good and bad players)? Advanced BG players who may not be
computer Savvy? Or Novice users who need their children to turn the PC
on? (Just kidding).

I believe that the original target audience has changed from when Gnubg
started out. We have windows builds where many types of people are using
it (Especially on Windows, and many who are intermediate BG players of
intermediate computer savvyness - in particular those people on the
internet gaming zone)

I get many question from people who play on MSN's site (Don't make fun
of that. Some of the future world champions may just come from there).
But Gnubg is spreading quickly by word of mouth. But the GUI experience
is imho our biggest downfall.

I think we should define who we are writing this for, and then attempt
to design a GUI for that. The tools and libraries we use are the next
question. I think GnuBG's interface is now an improtant part of the
product.

Maybe I am wrong. But just my 2cents.

On Wed, 2004-05-05 at 11:31, Øystein Johansen wrote:
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> Hi all,
> 
> I'm browsing through the GNOME developer manuals and I find out that the
> GNOME libraries has a lot of good stuff that GNU Backgammon is currently
> missing. At the same time GNU Backgammon utilises a lot of the GNOME
> libraries already. Since all our widgets are in GTK, I don't think it
> will be much problem of interating GNU Backgammon to the GNOME desktop.
> 
> Discussion: Do we really want that?
> 
> On one side, I think the gnubg project could benefit on makeing based on
> GNOME the componets, like gnomeui etc. The interface could benefit in
> the way that it will be using the GNOME standards, and the users will be
> therefore be familiar with the menu systems etc. We can simply add drag
> and drop functionality, and maybe a MDI could be implemented simpler as
> well?
> 
> On the other side. If it depend fully on GNOME, users who don't have
> GNOME will be annoyed I guess. I don't think GNOME is portable to
> Windows so there must be a lot a #ifdef to make it compile on windows.
> Someone will also compile without GNOME support on GNU/Linux systems,
> and I guess we need a lot of #ifdefs to make this.
> 
> Is it worth the effort?
> 
> - -Øystein
> 
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-- 
Mike Petch
CApp::Sysware Consulting Ltd.
Suite 1002,1140-15th Ave SW.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
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(403)804-5700.

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