Target customers?

[diligentcircle]

Anyways, this is a rather aesthetic improvement so it should be more at the bottom of the todo list, things like info about a PND in PNDStore is way more important.

http://repo.openpand...p=bzar-panorama


c'mon people, get with the program. just make sure you read the additional info on there to set it up right

I've looked at Panorama. It was only by chance that I figured out that I was supposed to drag the mouse to move to another screen. And it doesn't really work so well.


But in any case, I don't see what that has to do with PNDStore or getting started with the Pandora... it looks like it has something to do with MilkyHelper, but frankly, I can't figure out how to use MilkyHelper. All I see when I launch it is a blank terminal.


And really, it hardly matters anyway... because these things aren't even on the Pandora by default. They're hardly going to help a newbie that's just getting started.

 

[gruso]

I think something important on the way to a better user experience is things being more instantaneous and generally fluent. I don't want to wait 3 seconds for MiniMenu to load every time I close a program. It just makes the OS look bad because that's one of the things you notice immediately when you use the device.

This is a really interesting aspect of the user experience. Most devices these days (including desktop machines) spend significant time loading their interfaces - and the majority of them just give the user something soothing to look at while it happens. A spinning icon, or glowing orb, or even a black screen. Skeezix has taken the verbose approach, allowing the user to see what Minimenu is doing. On one hand it's geek friendly. It's a good thing. On the other hand it highlights to people that there are cogs turning in the background, and they're sitting there waiting while it chugs through all the tasks.

In reality, all UIs are chugging through similar tasks in the background. People might start to feel differently about their OSX or iOS or Win7, if the ambient wait screens were dropped and verbosity re-instated. In the scheme of things I don't think Minimenu is slow at all. Yet, I have had the exact same thoughts you have - that I am waiting too long for it to reload.


The psychology of UI design I'd love to see a controlled user reaction study on different versions of Minimenu. Verbose, glowing orb, black screen.

 

[WizardStan]

If I had any interest in getting my masters, that might actually be an interesting thesis project.

 

[fusion_power]

I think something important on the way to a better user experience is things being more instantaneous and generally fluent. I don't want to wait 3 seconds for MiniMenu to load every time I close a program. It just makes the OS look bad because that's one of the things you notice immediately when you use the device.

This is a really interesting aspect of the user experience. Most devices these days (including desktop machines) spend significant time loading their interfaces - and the majority of them just give the user something soothing to look at while it happens. A spinning icon, or glowing orb, or even a black screen. Skeezix has taken the verbose approach, allowing the user to see what Minimenu is doing. On one hand it's geek friendly. It's a good thing. On the other hand it highlights to people that there are cogs turning in the background, and they're sitting there waiting while it chugs through all the tasks.

You can make the MiniMenu user experience 100% better by just including a function that always goes to the last cathegory and the last program you used. At the Moment it is just weird to land at the first cathegory (all apps in my case) when closing a programm or just change one single option in Mini Menu. I really wonder why Skezix forgot this little but important feature. I want to return to the point where I eft Mini Menu after starting a programm from. I guess this would be just one line of code or so.


Tiny "unimportant" stuff like this can make a big difference. Good GUI Design seems to be harder to do than I thought. Well, I can't code but I know what an GUI needs and how it has to act to "feel right". It is more or less some guts feeling but I guess the most people just feel if something is right or wrong when it comes to an User Interface.


And yes, Blender UI was pretty on the wrong side before v.2.5

 

[gruso]

The same problem is present in Picklelauncher - it always drops you at the start of the file list. I raised it with Pickle and he's looking at a fix. Skeezix is equally open to feedback & improvements (and going by recent threads, he's ready to start sneaking in some 2am coding sessions again) so you should drop him a PM

 

[fusion_power]

I'm sure he is already aware of this problem, I can't imagine that I'm the first one who misses an option for always returning to the last used section, cathegory. It's a basic feature IMHO. ^^


Besides this, Mini Menu is fine. A little bit more cleaning here and there alltogehter with more userfriendly ovr management and all is fine. For Example, how about just drag and drop an app to another cathegory? No need to mess with dozens of sub menus of which Mini Menu has actualy to much.


Well that should be just an simple example how userfriendlyness can be improved by compared small changes. We don't have to re-invent the wheel.

 

[DaMummy]

I've looked at Panorama. It was only by chance that I figured out that I was supposed to drag the mouse to move to another screen. And it doesn't really work so well.


But in any case, I don't see what that has to do with PNDStore or getting started with the Pandora... it looks like it has something to do with MilkyHelper, but frankly, I can't figure out how to use MilkyHelper. All I see when I launch it is a blank terminal.


And really, it hardly matters anyway... because these things aren't even on the Pandora by default. They're hardly going to help a newbie that's just getting started.

as I said, read the additional info on how to change it to MilkyTest and use it as its meant to be used

 

[diligentcircle]

as I said, read the additional info on how to change it to MilkyTest and use it as its meant to be used

I took a quick glance, but frankly, I don't install new stuff enough to try very hard to get it to work. In any case, this sounds very much like "figure it out yourself", and is a terrible thing to say to a beginner. A new Pandora owner should have instant access to a user-friendly package manager that just works.

 

[gruso]

as I said, read the additional info on how to change it to MilkyTest and use it as its meant to be used

Can you stop with the arrogance? The conversation is about new users, and onpon4 is right - Panorama is not a relevant option in this context until it's a stock GUI option on the Pandora.

 

[DaMummy]

im not being arrogant, im saying open the config file in a txt editor, and change default GUI to MilkyTest. although i never did get a complete answer from B-ZaR and Cloudef why MilkyTest cant BE the default...

 

[Hoodoo]

The problem here is you can try to hide the sad fact that Pandora runs Linux as hard as you wish, but every user at some point will have to face it.


By that time he should have an idea on how essential things work in Linux: file system hierarchy, rights and permissions, basic understanding of how to install a driver, basic file operations in terminal, file systems and mounting devices, some commands (cat, grep, head, tail, top, ps and such) and how to invoke window manager if his decorations are gone. Some less arrogant version of 'how to ask smart questions' would also be nice.


No one can get away with 'I'm not a computer scientist and don't want to read about all that crap' approach with Linux. Ever. Even Canonical didn't change this, no matter how much money mr. Shuttleworth throws at it.


So yes, the developers should try to make their apps user friendly and all, but if one doesn't want to read a couple of pages of scary 'technical' stuff now and then he should rather go and buy a Playstation or an iPad.

 

[fusion_power]

But it is not impossible to make the Pandora more User Friendly. "Buy a Playstation" may be easy but no challenge. I see it as sport and Challenge to make the Pandora beginner Friendly and let people use it without Liniux Knowledge. Thats the entire Fun IMHO. Mini Menu is a great start and even the Pandora Desktp is "Windows like" enough to use it without Terminal and Commandline Orgies.


The Pandora can be Geek Toy and Casual gamer Toy at the same time. This is no madness, This Is Pandora! :lol:

 

[diligentcircle]

im not being arrogant, im saying open the config file in a txt editor, and change default GUI to MilkyTest. although i never did get a complete answer from B-ZaR and Cloudef why MilkyTest cant BE the default...

I still have a hard time seeing what this has to do with download managers... and personally, I found this "MilkyTest" GUI to be... not good. Unnecessarily difficult to control.

The problem here is you can try to hide the sad fact that Pandora runs Linux as hard as you wish, but every user at some point will have to face it.


By that time he should have an idea on how essential things work in Linux: file system hierarchy, rights and permissions, basic understanding of how to install a driver, basic file operations in terminal, file systems and mounting devices, some commands (cat, grep, head, tail, top, ps and such) and how to invoke window manager if his decorations are gone. Some less arrogant version of 'how to ask smart questions' would also be nice.


No one can get away with 'I'm not a computer scientist and don't want to read about all that crap' approach with Linux. Ever. Even Canonical didn't change this, no matter how much money mr. Shuttleworth throws at it.


So yes, the developers should try to make their apps user friendly and all, but if one doesn't want to read a couple of pages of scary 'technical' stuff now and then he should rather go and buy a Playstation or an iPad.

I absolutely hate this mentality. Linux is not hard or "technical". In many ways, Linux is EASIER to use than Windows. We're talking about package managers here, and just about every Linux distribution has a very good package manager. Much better than PNDstore. Usually these package managers let you search the database of available software, read about the software, and download the software with a single mouse click (and a password, either yours or root's). No other Linux distribution that I know of requires you to create a specific set of directories and tell your package manager where to put the stuff it downloads. Of course, there's usually a fixed filesystem on a desktop PC running Linux, in the hard drive, but it could still be made much easier to understand. Rather than asking "Where do you want to save this?", the PNDstore should ask "What SD card should this go on?/Where do you want icons to appear?", and it should create directories that don't exist for you.


I don't see why any user should be burdened with details they shouldn't even have to know. You know, like an arbitrary selection of directories which all new programs must be placed in.


As an aside, I've never even HEARD of cat, grep, head, tail, top, or ps. That's not slowed me down so far. And I didn't know how to start-up the window manager until recently, when it crashed or something on my Pandora. I've never needed to do that on a desktop PC.

 

[Neelix]

I absolutely hate this mentality. Linux is not hard or "technical". In many ways, Linux is EASIER to use than Windows. We're talking about package managers here, and just about every Linux distribution has a very good package manager. Much better than PNDstore. Usually these package managers let you search the database of available software, read about the software, and download the software with a single mouse click (and a password, either yours or root's). No other Linux distribution that I know of requires you to create a specific set of directories and tell your package manager where to put the stuff it downloads. Of course, there's usually a fixed filesystem on a desktop PC running Linux, in the hard drive, but it could still be made much easier to understand. Rather than asking "Where do you want to save this?", the PNDstore should ask "What SD card should this go on?/Where do you want icons to appear?", and it should create directories that don't exist for you.


I don't see why any user should be burdened with details they shouldn't even have to know. You know, like an arbitrary selection of directories which all new programs must be placed in.

In concept, you are absolutely correct. This is what we all want the Pandora to be. The reality though is that the Pandora's software is a Work In Progress.


PNDStore is unfinished. It is useful enough in its current form to add it to the firmware but it is far from its intended feature set. Panorama is unfinished. MilkyTest was never designed to be an end product, rather a quickly thrown together example UI to test the Panorama libmilky plugin, hence the name. Again, its existing feature set made it useful as is so people are using it.


The devs are working steadily towards the ideals you envision, but its going to take a while to get there and in the mean-time the Pandora is still a hard-hat zone, where you do need to be willing to learn the nuts and bolts and work from the scaffolding until the construction work is complete.


- Neelix

 

[Hoodoo]

Awww.


Disclaimer: I don't know a thing about Pandora's internals and I don't know a thing about actual programming, I don't have a CS degree or something, I just sell goddamn alcohol for the living. I'm a miserable Linux n00b. I don't want to look like an important person or Linux expert or experienced user, I've asked some really stuid questions already and I'll do so in the future, and I'm far behind any developer who contributes to Pandora community now. I don't mean to humiliate anyone in any way.


But please don't propagate ignorance. Please don''t be afraid of the goddamned console, it's a great diagnostics and administrative tool, please learn what something like ten commands do, it would save you some time and effort later! Text editor is not your enemy and plain text config files do have their right to exist, and there's nothing to be afraid of with them.


Let's take one simple example: one guy have recently asked if he could somehow use a playlist file to drop his tunes to an external device. I don't mean to offend him in any way here and I don't mean to sound like a developer, a monkey with half of its brain cut out could come up with the same or even better piece of code, but I wrote a script which would do exactly what this guy wanded, and he didn't even try it - it's partially my fault that I didn't provide a solution which would 'just work', but damn, firing up a terminal and running

perl ./script.pl

is not a rocket science. Packing it into a PND would be more code than thescript itself.


Providing logs which are stored as a plain text is very simple and very easy to do. Running a couple of commands in damn terminal might just help people which are willing to help you to solve your problem. Who's suffering if John Doe is ignorant? Me? No, not a single bit. I'll get my stuff working. John Doe maybe, you can ram the goddamn solution down his throat, but he'won't recognize it. He would rather have life, yeah. Computers must be simple.

 

[DaMummy]

im not being arrogant, im saying open the config file in a txt editor, and change default GUI to MilkyTest. although i never did get a complete answer from B-ZaR and Cloudef why MilkyTest cant BE the default...

I still have a hard time seeing what this has to do with download managers... and personally, I found this "MilkyTest" GUI to be... not good. Unnecessarily difficult to control.

...? are you just messing with me? do you not know that panorama is a download manager? with all these features you ask pndstore to have, like preview pics, info about pnd, asking you where to place it, which folder, and which sd card, updates all pnds with 2 clicks of a button, sort by alphabet, or date released, and this is still in early development.

 

[diligentcircle]

I KNOW it's incomplete.


I'm talking about issues that need to be fixed, and some of the response I'm getting is "well, it's possible to do that by x, y, and z".


I'm not asking for help, though! I'm talking about initial user experience.


And I never said that anything Linux does is wrong.


PLEASE, for the love of God, read my posts! I'm just mentioning CURRENT shortcomings of PNDstore and CURRENT difficulty in getting started for a new user! This conversation actually started with this post:

I wouldn't say the OS of the Pandora itself is complicated. Actually, the only real problem, I'd say, is the initial setup. But that was before PNDstore was included in the NAND, so that's probably a lot better now. All that's needed now is for PNDstore to actually show information about the stuff in the repo... and maybe auto-creation of certain directories? I remember reading something about that.

Responses like "oh, well it's not done" and "oh, well you can use x instead" do NOT add to the conversation in any meaningful way whatsoever, especially when they come across as "there's no problem", unless you can somehow explain how it helps people who just got their Pandora and aren't necessarily geniuses.

 

[gruso]

Yeah guys, try to keep a focus on what it is that's being discussed here. It seems as if onpon4 is being shot down for merely suggesting how things could be improved - and things can be improved. I don't agree on every point (for eg., users should definitely understand the PND folder structure no matter how shiny the OS gets) but that's the point of discussion & debate.


If you think things are perfect as they are, that's perfectly cool - I'd say most owners are fairly happy with the current state of the OS. But things must always move forward, and they will, as they have done since Hotfix 1.


Craig himself started a thread back in March about standardising emulator interfaces. A pipe dream maybe, but he saw the need after watching people use the Pandora. These people weren't retards who 'should just buy iPhones' because they didn't understand the Linux file system. They were gamers who just wanted things to make a little more sense. You can cater to this without presenting any threat to the throbbing geek heart of Pandora.

 

[DaMummy]

im really not trying to come across as an arrogant ass-wad, but as i keep mentioning, all these things you wish PNDstore had, we already have in panorama, and while its not currently in the OS, ED has already stated multiple times that it will be included in Yar's Revenge because of how good it is already. PNDStore isnt any more official then Panorama, both were created outside of the OS initially by people outside of the OS devs. Don't get me wrong here, PNDstore was great at its time, and nothing but utmost respect to Tempel for creating it and pushing a pandora app store in the right direction, but asking/hoping for feature implementation to PNDstore that panorama already has is no different from craig not accepting the repo because it has all the features he's saying he will implement into his apps.o

 

[fusion_power]

I naver have tried Panorama because of...I don't know... Maybe because I already have PND Store and it works. PND Store is a nice little programm, still can be improved here and there but it makes PND management much more user friendly, which is a great thing. It still misses a sorting function and some additional PND Infos, but the basic stuff is there. But I actualy find the PND download from the great Repo Site even better, there is everything you need, Screenshots, Infos, Cathegories... This really helps to make Pandora handling easy enough for everyone. This is the right way to go, I wish that all Pandora Apps are available in the Repo, at the Moment the stuff is just to wide spread over FDorums, the Wiki, App Store and Archive. This is IMHO the biggest Minus at the Moment.