It's a new one? I guess you are not the target audience of this Windows manager if you are not willing to give it a try and explore the features and the experience before rationalizing it's usefulness
> It's a new one? I guess you are not the target audience of this Windows manager if you are not willing to give it a try and explore the features and the experience before rationalizing it's usefulness
To add some perspective, I am the target audience for a new Window Manager, but I'm still gonna need a goal or mission statement before I try it out.
No need to be fancy, just use one of the following stock phrases:
For people who like eye candy...
A clutter-free, spartan environment
Smart(er) tiling/stacking/workspace management
Lean and fast
Big with tons of value-added features
Highly customisable
"It Just Works(tm)"
A (simpler|more complex) alternative to (Gnome|Plasma|Windowmaker|Xfce)[1]
A (new|old|ancient) way to manage workflows
Designed for (programmer|designer|gamer|salesman) productivity
After all, creating a minimal Window Manager is about 2kLoC (in C). Someone who went to the effort to write maybe 20kLoC
a) Ain't stupid or incompetent in the least
and
b) Must have had a good reason for doing so!
Telling the world that reason can only help - the majority of us support new projects, we don't diss them for no reason (for that, we go to reddit :-))
[1] Yes, I know that some of those are desktop environments and some are window managers. No, I don't want to argue about the difference.
Xmonad stayed under a thousand LoC for it's first few releases.
As for this DE, it's main feature seems to be having a topbar that expands itself on hover. But to me that seems like it's biggest issue.
The animation will always seem choppy. And you cannot click anything on the bar directly because everything moves around. And you will inevitably accidentally expand it. It's just bad UI...
> As for this DE, it's main feature seems to be having a topbar that expands itself on hover. But to me that seems like it's biggest issue.
> The animation will always seem choppy. And you cannot click anything on the bar directly because everything moves around. And you will inevitably accidentally expand it. It's just bad UI...
So?
I mean, I agree it's bad UI, but some people will absolutely love it. I mean if it was so universally regarded as a bad UI we wouldn't be seeing the same pattern on every third website, would we?
It's all different strokes for different folks. Doesn't appeal to me (or to you), but I think there's enough people who prefer prettiness over ease-of-use; after all, look how many people still love their Macbooks, even though it's still got pretty a poor UI.
While I'm sure -I'm- not the target market for a new Windows manager, it really is helpful to understand up front why a project exists.
Sometimes it's a different feature set. Sometimes it's the same (or reduced) feature set or an emphasis on performance. Sometimes it's the side effect of using a new language. Sometimes it's just an exercise in learning.
While these things are all completely valid (and more besides) the underlying reason is usually helpful when deciding if I am "willing to give it a try". Context matters, and it's helpful to understand if the developer's context is compatible with my context.
Well, I'd kinda like to have some idea of what I'm getting before I download it. Otherwise, why even bother?
You are asking users to commit a certain amount of time, effort and resources to testing out your software. The least you could do is set some expectation other than "LOL, n00 S0ftW4rez, yo. CZekkit, b1tches!".
To add some perspective, I am the target audience for a new Window Manager, but I'm still gonna need a goal or mission statement before I try it out.
No need to be fancy, just use one of the following stock phrases:
For people who like eye candy...
A clutter-free, spartan environment
Smart(er) tiling/stacking/workspace management
Lean and fast
Big with tons of value-added features
Highly customisable
"It Just Works(tm)"
A (simpler|more complex) alternative to (Gnome|Plasma|Windowmaker|Xfce)[1]
A (new|old|ancient) way to manage workflows
Designed for (programmer|designer|gamer|salesman) productivity
After all, creating a minimal Window Manager is about 2kLoC (in C). Someone who went to the effort to write maybe 20kLoC
a) Ain't stupid or incompetent in the least
and
b) Must have had a good reason for doing so!
Telling the world that reason can only help - the majority of us support new projects, we don't diss them for no reason (for that, we go to reddit :-))
[1] Yes, I know that some of those are desktop environments and some are window managers. No, I don't want to argue about the difference.