It sounds like RT will never understand what we are trying to say and keep telling us we are wrong.

Sad.

That's a bit harsh. They are listening, but they are focused on developers, not 'users'. Therefore, when trying to speak for users, we get the answer "RTFM" (basically).

I think it's more important to give them constructive feedback than to complain that G5 is 'bad'.

Hi Alex,

By all means keep coming back and saying the same thing time and time again. But to support your argument please define "Standard User", which may be a great trick as I am fairly sure you do not have access to our member list. Even if you did you wouldn't have had the time to conduct a straw poll to see what percentage are developers versus your "standard users".

David Goode wrote: David, that's a tad bit rude. You are basically saying "we will keep ignoring you, since you know nothing".

You seem to be placing "Standard User" into just "RT user".
I certainly hope you don't just look at type of memberships of RT users and assume that all that have 'Developer' plans are indeed developers. I don't know how anyone would know what each member actually is unless there was a poll done.

As someone with a Developers plan, and someone that does see the power of G5, I have to say that I am thinking about the 'End Users', the one's we hand the website over to. Those are the 'normal people', the one's that don't care about CSS. I am the translator for them, trying to explain what the true talented geeks do. And this is where the disconnect is coming from.

I don't use Rocket Launcher, and I try to use a minimum of extensions. Why? Because I've taken over websites where 'developers' do all this fancy stuff, some customized, and most of it served no purpose but to make the developer look great. Oh, and if anything goes wrong, it's likely that same developer has a chance to make money fixing their custom creation. End users don't know about updates (yes, they should), and they don't know about keeping memberships.

Perhaps I care too much for my clients, where I try to give them something they can update themselves if they have to without an education in a framework different than the main CMS.

It's been over a year that G5 is out, and while it has improved greatly, it still has a way to go.
Please think about how often you are hearing "WTF?!", even from people that want all the features.
It's overwhelming for most, and when I see something overwhelming for experienced designers, then I know the resistance I will get from site owners when they go to just 'peek' at the template settings and are greeted with way too many options.

How about this.... think of how those Virus Scanners and anti-Malware software work. They default to the 'dummy version', with an option to see the advanced features. This would be fantastic to have, keeping the options available, but basically hiding them.

Does no one else unpublish some core components in Joomla? Like Banners, and maybe Contacts? I disable any component that is not needed so that when the Site Owner goes to the backend, they are not overwhelmed with menus filled with unknown concepts. If they are never going to use the Banner component, why should it be in the menu?

Visually appealing and intuitive does NOT mean dropping functionality.

Again, I agree G5 is powerful. But don't dismiss the call for it being more intuitive and understandable. It's obvious from the ongoing 'complaints' that there is something wrong. Saying RTFM, or 'open your mind', is a bit insulting to some of us that have read the manual and are open to change. And digging your heels in because you're 'right' is not going to help either side.