Re: [Usability] Control Center Appearance Capplet

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

On 04/16/2007 09:57 PM, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> Hey Thomas,
>
> On Mon, 2007-04-16 at 14:57 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:
> > I'm currently looking at integrating the various appearance settings 
> > throughout GNOME into a single "Appearance Settings" application for the 
> > control center.
> >
> > I have made some mockups, which can be seen here:
> > http://live.gnome.org/ControlCenter/AppearanceSettings
>
> This looks very good, apart from the "Options" tab. First, they're not
> options, they're preferences, secondly, they're "Menu" preferences.
> Menus and toolbars is a bit too long, just call it "Menus", or
> "Toolbars".

No problem with using Preferences instead of Options, but I wasn't going 
to limit this to just Menus & Toolbars preferences.

[...]
> > Dialog Window
> >
> > Related to the above, I have also not set this window to be a dialog 
> > window. The window is not asking for any confirmation or action from the 
> > user, so I think it ought to be a "normal" window. We also had several 
> > bug reports[3] requesting that the previous theme capplet have maximise 
> > buttons because in contained a scrollable window. Metacity (quite 
> > reasonably) does not allow maximise buttons on dialogs, so it had to be 
> > changed to a normal window.
>
> That seems fair, but would also need to be changed across the whole
> desktop.

Definitely, which is why I'd like to see some clarification about these 
issues in the HIG.

> > Undo and Redo
> >
> > There has been some suggestion on the control center list that we might 
> > like to include Undo/Redo or Revert buttons in the capplets[4], It would 
> > be useful to get some input into the usability/accessibility 
> > implications of such a feature.
>
> Not needed, IMO. The changes are instantly shown, and if they're not,
> the restarted capplet won't remember what you last changed, and won't be
> able to undo it. And would "undo" revert the last change done in the
> capplet, or since the capplet was started?

As noted in my reply to Calum's e-mail, I think "Revert to default" and 
"Revert to when I opened this window" would be more useful.

Regards,

Thomas