Scenario:
You go to a website, and you want to play an audio or video file, with an application beside the default two options that you have in the dialog box (Open With > Other).
The only option i came across, in the dialoge box, to find the application is a dialog called location. It seems you have know and type in the full path, /usr/bin/mplayer, to the application or browse the file system, then wait a considerable amount of time before it is located and still have to select it before using it.

In Konqueror, i usually just type in the name of the application, and boom it get opened. (Open With > Other > mplayer)

Is there something i am missing in gnome configuration to be able to get that feature, or is it not available.

That is another reason why having choices is great. If you don’t like Gnome then you can choose to use KDE, or Fluxbox, or IceWM, etc. No one is forcing you to use one or another. I use Gnome, and after getting used to the way it works (since I was used to KDE) I now find I prefer Gnome in most things.

But really, my desktop environment matters little in the end. The programs I use are far more important, and they work just fine on all of them (I use Kompozer for basic web pages, gedit for Ruby on Rails programming for example.)

Isn’t it a lot easier to change a setting, see the result immediately, and change it back if necessary, than try to remember a number of changes made at once.

Windows carries this ‘multiple apply’ madness to extremes, where you often have the option to change things on a series of tabs before pressing apply – not only a strain on the ol’ memory, its confusing because its unclear whether ‘apply’ is applying just the changes on the current tab, or all tabs.

Gnome has a lot of UI problems, but this isn’t one of them. A priori, the ‘Instant apply’ way is a lot more intuitive and less likely to cause problems than the ‘multiple apply’ way in > 98% situations, though there may be situations where it’s not appropriate.

Being a Mac person, when I started using Windows for the first time, I was confused by the “Apply” button. Did I have to “Apply” first before clicking “Ok”? Would clicking Ok without clicking Apply first cause my changes to not be saved? Even today, I still click Apply and then Ok.

Removing the Cancel button I believe comes in response to some user tests Apple conducted in the 1980s. Some new users were clicking Cancel to close, and didn’t understand that “Ok” meant “Yes, Do This”. My grandfather, when he was learning computers, talked about “cancelling” a window; he meant to close it, not to literally tell it not to accept his changes.

Having just one button, Close, is completely self-explanatory and unconfusing. If you want to close the window, you immediately know to click that. The important settings windows where you really need to be able to cancel your changes, have the “Defaults” button where you can reset everything to known good values.

Unless u change the settings in any UI components, u r pretty sure that it wud save coz theres only one button avail there.

Now, when u want to change the settings then u open that window (UI) and change it. If u dont want, then retain the default settings and close, default settings will be over written.

So if u dont know what u r doing, then providing extra buttons is merely a waste. As a system user u should know what ur doing.

If there is one thing I hate about gnome is that there is no apply button. It just does stuff soon as I click an option.