On 2/18/06, Miles Lane miles.lane@gmail.com wrote:
A quote from that page:
Why doesn't the screensaver preferences tool allow me to change the settings for the theme? We are trying to take a different approach. We would prefer for the themes to simply work. [...] There are a few reasons for this approach. One of them is to simplify the UI and make it easier for the user. Another reason is so that system administrators can more easily control (or lock down) the settings.
Personally, I think the Gnome developers' know-it-all attitude is stupid and offensive. Dang it! They take their bloody "present no options to the users" too far! Idiots!
I'm sure these particular Gnome developers mean well, and I don't see the point in getting angry at them.
I agree that neither of the reasons they list are very good. Having one extra button to open a second dialogue hardly clutters the UI, and makes it no harder for the user. To let system admins lock down settings, they should simply provide a "Don't show or let users open advanced controls." key. I think it's still a good concept to provide multiple variations of some of the screensavers in the list, but that's not mutually exclusive to allowing advanced controls.
If someone presents a well-formed and polite request for them to allow advanced settings, I think we could get further in resolving this issue.
n0dalus.