With KDE 4 a main design goal was - coherent to what we where criticised for - usability and configurability. While trying to provide the same functionality we where aiming for a simpler, smoother user interface, “human” inspired user interaction, managable configuration dialogs. The cooperation of artists, usability experts and coders was fantastic, what we have now - and better, where we’re going in the future - is just that!

… we just forgot to tell our users …

Well, not forgot; but that’s what i noticed from the questions at the event, the focus - once “when will it be released” - now shifted to “i used to be able to do this” or “where’s this feature gone”, and it’s usually one of those things i was never proud of when showing or explaining in the past. Now i would, but now these seem a problem! People got used to the oddness, got used to massive configuration dialogs! They are unable to cope with our simplicity! What I am talking about?

Well, here’s some examples: