Re: new background capplet concerns

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

You have some good suggestions. I have some comments below, but I must
admit my only knowledge of the capplet is the screenshot you posted
and your email.

On 26Mar2002 05:41PM (-0500), Anna Marie Dirks wrote:
> 
> So these are the usability problems I find with this dialog. I propose
> the following changes:
> 
>         1. Rename the following labels to something less
>            Picture-centric: "Picture Options", "Border the picture with
>            a:". 

What's wrong with "Picture Options" (other than using the somewhat
quaint word "picture" in place of the more familiar "image")? They are
all about pictures, right? I think "Border the picture with a:" is OK,
as long as the label changes when the user has no picture set.

>         2. Add accelerators to the "Picture" and "Border the picture
>            with a" labels.

Sounds right.

>         3. Use a standard file selector, or an option menu + browse
>            button to set the picture so that the dialog has some
>            history.

I think some form of Undo command would provide a more useful form of
undo. That way, you could undo changing the colors, too. Picking an
exact color

>         4. Add a Help button, remove the "You can drag.." label, and add
>            that information to the Help. 

I can't agree with this one. This is the kind of explanatory text that
makes using the dialog a lot easier if you know about it, but that a
user would never think to look in the Help for.

>         5. Add colons to Left/Right/Top/Bottom Color so as to comply
>            with HIG

Sounds right.

>         6. Capitalize the renamed version of "Border the picture with a"
>            properly, as outlined in the HIG.

Does the HIG really say to use title caps instead of sentence caps for
dialog control labels? That seems really wrong in this case: "Border
the Picture with A:" In fact, this particular label is using a
sentence-like structure so I don't think the colon here is right.

>         7. Use radiobuttons or an option menu for the "Picture Options"
>            settings, and replace the previews with icons.  

I think the previews are nice. They may not show a lot of difference
among the choices for your particular background image, but I assume
that's because there is not much difference in the way your background
image would really look for each of these options.

Also, when you want to display a set of mutually exclusive choices
labeled with images and text (and the images are not small enough to
align horizontally with the text), then a set of toggle buttons is
preferrable to radio buttons. Using toggle buttons in this way is both
HIG approved and not uncommon on other operating systems. In this
case, I really doubt there will be any confusion.

>         8. Remove the "No Picture" option and add either a "Remove
>            Picture" button which is sensitive when there is a picture,
>            or a "Use a background picture" checkbutton that toggles the
>            sensitivity of the picture options. 

Making it a command instead of an option makes sense in some ways. But
it woudl leave no good place to put the plain color / gradient
preview.

I think we need to consider not just the most appropriate widget for
each individual control, but also the overall visual design. The
current design looks well-balanced. If it were up to me, I'd add even
more white space, and make some of the spacings more even (the space
between the toggle buttons doesn't appear to be the same size), but
but still, it looks a *lot* nicer than most dialogs in GNOME.

>         9. Change the button which displays the picture to be a good
>            old-fashioned preview. 

The preview would seem strangely redundant if it wasn't attached to
any kind of active control, I think.

> 
> I guess that is about it. What do you guys think? If it is decided that
> any of these are good directions to follow, I'd be happy to help out
> with this capplet, either by testing it in my usability lab at Ximian,
> or by doing research for you about how other systems fix this problem.
> Just let me know. Thanks for the consideration.
>

It would be interesting to see if testing identifies the same problems
you did.

Regards,

Maciej