Comment 55 for bug 253709

> and after being shown how to use it, how
> did he manage?

In our culture we arrange items from right to left then from up to down, like we read. Europeans arrange items from left to right, but still from up to down, like they read. Plasma seems to assume that the user will arrange items from down to up, as items can be placed along the bottom of the screen and then resized comfortably, yet cannot be arranged along the top of the screen and then sized comfortably. So far as I know, no human culture arranges from down to up.

> btw, i find that the people who have the hardest times
> with new things are people who are the most familiar with
> older things. basic learning principle.

I agree. Note that this user went from IE to Firefox without a blink, and from MS Office to Open Office without a complaint. He is very good at figuring things out, which is why we get along. I asked him afterward, and he _did_ notice that the resize was only moving the upper and right hand side, but he refused to beleive in his instict telling him that there is absolutely no way to resize on the bottom as well. He considered just moving the plasmoid and then resizing the top, however, he considered that as a last-resort workaround and wanted to figure out the right way to do it.

> widgets are not windows

They are rectangular containers of information. The problem of how to intuitively resize rectangular containers was solved decades ago.

> once we start mimicking windows people will expect more and
> more windowing behaviour, and that just won't work out nicely.

So the solution is to make resizing unintuitive? How about having distinct, huge grabhandles at all four corners when the user clicks the resize button. Don't let them resize from the edges, like windows, but only from the corners. It will be visually different from windows, yet intuitive.