Re: 2.4 meeting summary (2004-02-23)

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 05:49, Sven Neumann wrote:

> Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> writes:
> 
> > GtkFileChooser UI
> > =================

> > The new GtkFileChooser UI design by Seth Nickell 
> > (http://www.gnome.org/~seth/filechooser-spec/) is pretty much in
> > place now and can be seen in CVS, though it apparently may take another
> > week or so to finish all the details.
> 
> Has this new design been discussed here? In my opinion it's even worse
> than what we had in CVS a week ago. This new design with the lack of a
> folder view is completely unusable. I would even go so far to say that
> apps should better stay with the current GtkFileSelection dialog.
> My main concern is however that I find it very frustrating that such
> decisions are made completely off-list.

How do you see *decisions* being made on list? I tried to get someone
to take up ownership of the UI design issue here 6 months ago, and
all we got was 500 comments and 20 mockups, all in different directions.

So, we had a design that was not really designed, but just arrived
at by a random walk. The new design may not be ideal for all
users; it's primary goal is to be clean and simple for non-expert
users; but it is a coherent design with real goals in mind.
Which is I think a big advantage.

If you have:
 
 - Particular modifications of the the fileselection within your
   application that you think that aren't accomodated by the new design.
   (E.g., your usage of filters/preview/extra widgets.)
 - Particular usage patterns of your application's users that aren't
   accommodated within the new design.

Please bring them up with Seth. If you want to Cc: this list,
that's fine.

But I don't think there is any room or time right now for more 
of the "that sucks" school of user interface design.

Regards,
						Owen