Re: Control Center Behavior

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Wed, 2002-07-17 at 16:27, Mark Finlay wrote:
> This may be something that has been talked to death already,
> but we, the member's of the "Gnome User Support Forum" have been 
> discussing the behavior of the Gnome Control Center in Gnome2.

Right off the cuff I should preface this by saying that I don't think
the active forum users on gnomedesktop.org provide an accurate sample
for the general GNOME user population. Also, the poll naturally
encourages response from the potentially noisy minority who want change,
while encouraging non-response from the silent majority who may prefer
the status quo. Combined with erroneous performance statements (I'm
guessing the 7x figure includes launching Nautilus) specifically
positioned to colour the poll, I'm not inclined to trust these results.

That said, I'm interested in figuring out why the Nautilus control
center is creating problems for you and some other users. I need more
information on the specific problems you are facing in order to better
understand the situation. This will help me in figuring out what
modifications are needed to the Nautilus control center, or if the
Nautilus control center has some inherent problems and we need to find a
better solution.

Specific factual statements assessing exactly where/how the control
center is not working well for you will be a lot more effective in
getting what you want than strong opinions :-)

> The main reasoning behind prefering the --use-shell version is:
> 1. It looks better and simpler, and is easier to understand.

What makes it better or simpler? Why is it easier to understand?
Specifically, why is it easier to understand a custom interface rather
than a standard file browsing interface?

> 2. It has sepporate panes for launchers and settings which is much more
> intuitive and eliminates confusion and disoriatation caused by the
> nautilus version.

What in particular is confusing and disorienting about the Nautilus
version for you? 

One problem I see with the Nautilus version is that its not immediately
obvious which items are folders and which are actual preference pages.
This is a serious problem. Ideally what would happen is that images for
folders would not replace the folder icon, but would work as emblems. As
a short term fix we should probably figure out how to disable icons for
folders when browsing that URI in Nautilus. Folder icons may not be as
pretty, but they're more useful.

> 3. It loads faster.

On my system the shell version takes about 2 seconds to load, the
Nautilus version takes slightly less than 2 seconds. Particularly since
you tried to colour the results of the poll by putting "Before you vote
don't forget that the shell loads abot 6 or 7 times faster than
nautilus", I'm concerned about the accuracy of the poll in even
representing the gnomedesktop.org forum population.

-Seth