Re: MIME interface suggestions

[James Henstridge <james jamesh id au>]

On 03/09/04 06:45, Sri Ramkrishna wrote:

> Yes, there is that problem of defining the levels and whether one really
> fits into them or is it wishful thinking.  Even starting out with a
> questionaire to determine user level is bad.  There are some other ones
> as well. So yeah, user levels is probably crack.
>  
The other reason why the user levels were removed was that it was 
difficult to implement correctly and maintain.

Having different user levels is not just a case of hiding some of the UI 
for changing settings.  Every place where a particular preference is 
checked in the app also needs to check the user level to see if it 
applies.  This is so that the following steps give no change in the 
behaviour of the app:

  1. start app in novice mode
  2. change to advanced mode
  3. alter a few preferences only available in advanced mode
  4. switch back to novice mode

If the app doesn't check the user level when using the value of an 
advanced pref, you can get into a situation where the app behaves 
different from what the user expects, and there is no difference in the 
preferences dialog.

The alternative to checking the user level each time is to reset 
preferences when changing user level.  The problems with this are that 
you'd need to know what prefs were associated with which user levels, 
and it might be considered a data loss bug.

This is getting a bit off topic from the original thread though, so 
should probably move to the nautilus or usability lists.

James.

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Email: james jamesh id au
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