Re: [Usability] instant-apply issue

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Jonathan Blandford wrote:

> I doubt that changes will occur in a vacuum on a regular basis.  I bet
> you're more likely to see it when you leave a dialog open, forget about
> it, reopen it on a different terminal and come back to the first one.

Or on a network, I guess there's always the chance that Joe Sysadmin
will change all his users' default preferences for some application
while Jo User is changing those preferences for herself.  Again, though,
I guess the chances are slim, and chances are the sysadmin will have
locked those preferences (temporarily or permanently) that he wants
control over anyway.  At worst, you might want a dialog popping up
saying that another user/application has just changed your settings, so
you might have to change them again yourself.

Which reminds me, does the porting guide and/or style guide suggest what
preferences dialogs should do when GConf indicates that the user doesn't
have permission to change a particular preference?  Disable those
controls?  Show a lock icon beside them or something?  Hopefully not
'just ignore any changes the user makes', anyway.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems