Re: [Deja-dup-hackers] Partial restore, take 2

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hi Deja-Dup crew! :)

> Allan Day, as our resident usability advocate, what do you think of
> this and the previous partial restore mockups?  I would appreciate a
> more experienced viewpoint than my own.

The design seems to be heading in the right direction, though it still
seems overly complex. This could do with a proper design person (ie. not
me ;) ) to have a look at it. I do have a few ideas though - I'll try
and get something together to show soon. Until then, some general
observations/comments...

* Nautilus integration would be great. It should be possible to access
previous versions of a file or directory from the file browser.

* It would be nice to be able to open and copy from backups as well as
restore.

* Restoration should be undoable - ie. a backup should be done as part
of the restoration process. Restorations should be marked in the restore
UI.

* Users will probably be interested in seeing the changes between
backups. Is it technically feasible to display this kind of information
(either as diffs, number or size of changes) in the UI?

> I've got some comments below for this v2 mockup.  It's a nice and
> flashy mockup overall.
> 
> 1) I'm not sure how the "select a date range" option works either as
> you try to enter one or visually after you select one.

Yes, we can probably come up with a better widget for this. I've got a
few ideas here.

> 2) You probably don't need two buttons for "Queue directory" and
> "Queue file".  For example, what would happen if you selected a
> directory?  Which button would you press?  The GTK+ file dialog
> handles this by choosing the current directory if no files are
> selected or otherwise choosing the files or folders selected.

Is it necessary to queue then restore? I suspect that it generally
isn't, and that it adds unnecessary complication when a single or small
number of selections are being restored.

> 3) I don't believe the size of the files to restore is actually known
> before restoring.  Which sucks and would be good to fix, but isn't
> going to happen soon.  So we don't need a column for that.
> 
> 4) The phrase "Restore Point" is odd.  Maybe like "Restore Date" or
> even "Version"?

Yes, 'Version'. Or 'Backup' maybe?

> 5) In the "restoring to" widget, the default should probably be
> "previous location" and then offer to let them choose a directory to
> put all files in.  This is because (A) if we default to a directory,
> we have to translate the directory name and that's kind of odd and (B)
> I think it's more common that a user just wants the files back where
> they should be.

Agreed:

[✔] Replace current version
  Restore destination: [ Home ]

Are there any similar interfaces that we could look at for inspiration?

Allan
--
aday on irc.gnome.org