Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Usability Concerns from Architect Fantasy

A new blog, Architect Fantasy, has a brilliant article on minor usability issues in Ubuntu 7.10 that detract from the overall user experience. From the article:

“Your average computer user might never say that they find the flicker at the start of the Operating System a bit daunting or cheap looking, but when they switch between an OSX desktop and a Linux desktop subconsciously the fluid interface does register in their mind. The result of that is all the praise we hear about the gorgeous OSX interface.”

I have to say I do agree wholeheartedly with all points raised in the article and perhaps could add a few thoughts of my own:-

• During the installer the Select Time Zone dialog doesn’t list London in the location drop-down, but does show London on the map, but only if you zoom in first.
• Absolutley requiring a password to be entered for gnome-keyring to unmask my wireless networking key is counter-productive, i.e. I should be able to boot my laptop and have network access without having to enter a password at any stage.
• I believe a new user to Gnome will have difficulty distinguishing between ‘System->Preferences’ and ‘System-Administration’. In fact, I’m still never sure in which to look.
• It’s been said so many times, but there should be a 1-click way of changing the orange/brown colour scheme to a different colour. My fiancée looking over my shoulder didn’t particularly like the colour scheme and I couldn’t show her a straightforward way of changing it — I know, I know, change the control set to ‘Clearlooks’ first, but that is difficult for a novice user to understand.

Oh and I’m not Ubuntu/Gnome-bashing, I love Ubuntu! This is just an attempt to jot down some of the frustrations myself and others have experienced.

No operating system is perfect, but the number of user experience issues in Ubuntu certainly does outnumber OSX. To be fair, Apple have just a bit more dosh to spend. (And yet certainly Microsoft have never quite got the user experience right even with America’s richest man at the helm.)

Perhaps I should just stop whining and start committing…

Java Update Frustrations

Come on Sun, this is appalling! I can’t imagine what your everyday user thinks of the Java ‘automatic’ update process. In fact, I can: nag screen. (see below for how to disable the Java automatic updater.)

I run Java 6 on my Windows XP machine at work. This morning I was forced to grumble and sigh my way through the following:-

1. Bubble messages pops up from my system tray. Asks whether I want to install a Java 6 update and, quite randomly, install OpenOffice ‘for free’. Hmm, I always thought OpenOffice was free anyway
2. I don’t click anything just yet…
3. A proxy login box pops up. Somehow Java found an update without needing proxy authentication (I access the internet at work via an authenticated proxy), but now it has to ask for auth. WTF?
4. *sigh* I give my proxy credentials, and click the popup to start the update.
5. Another dialog appears, asking if I want to install Java, or click ‘More Information’ to install OpenOffice ‘for free’, again.
6. I click ‘More Information’ which directs me to http://java.com/en/download/javacom_update.jsp, not a bad page actually I concede.
7. No need to install OOo though, I hit ‘Install’ on the Java updater.
8. *sigh* proxy credentials required, again. I supply.
9. All dialogs disappear. Nothing visible in my systray. Curious…
10. I forget about it and go back to my work (or rather ‘work’).
11. 10 minutes later out of the blue a Java installation dialog appears. By this time I’d forgotten about the Java install but this dialog wants to stop me doing what I’m doing.
12. I hit install. ‘Copying files…’
13. *sigh*, another proxy auth…
14. 

NO, thank YOU Sun, that was a horribly frustrating update process. If the update process was smooth maybe you’d get a few more installs of OpenOffice, too.

My advice: 1) do a silent install, 2) ask for the proxy password once, 3) finish with:

Java has been updated. Click here to see more products from the Sun family including the free OpenOffice productivity suite.

Oh and guess what? The ‘update’ kept the previous version of Java installed of course. I’ve now got 8 JVMs in C:\Program Files\Java alone (probably more elsewhere on my disk). Some of these I need for various apps & testing on different JVMs, some are just courtesy of Java point releases, wasting 70MB of disk and needing 14 bullet points to describe their installation process.

No wonder regular folk shy away from web sites that ‘require Java’. If it wasn’t my day job, I probably would too.

Disabling Automatic Updates

To disable the automatic Java updates, run javacpl from your Java installation directory (mine is C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_03\bin\) and untick ‘check for updates automatically’, i.e.:

I wouldn’t recommend this for the long term however since Java updates include important security updates and bug fixes.