Re: [Usability] [RFC] Announcing: Control-Center-GUI 0.1

[Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>]

Agreed.

-- dobey

On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 13:22 -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 18:22 +0100, Christian Neumair wrote:
> > As Jody pointed out, the Apple layout doesn't work very well for many
> > items - and we HAVE many items. While about 20 in the default setup are
> > still OK, we have to deal with the fact that new items will be added. So
> > the Apple approach seems to be badly scalable.
> 
> Planning to be "scalable" here is exactly the wrong thing to do. The
> person using the UI is not scalable. We should just assume there is a
> hardcoded limit of 15-20 items; and fix any and all reasons there are
> more.
> 
> If apps are installing extra items, then we should either remove the
> capability, or shove these extra items in some secondary location (like
> "other" or an "application items" tab or something) and say "if your
> control panel sucks because apps install crap, then it's the apps fault,
> file an app bug" - maybe we could put in the HIG:
> 
>  "The control-center is for desktop settings, i.e. stuff that does not
> appear to users to be
>   associated with any particular application. Do not put your app
> preferences there."
> 
> The Applications menu is the same way. Once you exceed a certain number
> of items, it's just not possible to arrange them sanely.
> 
> I like the part of this page
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000063.html
> starting with  "Here's a common programmer thought pattern: there are
> only three numbers: 0, 1, and n."
> 
> The UI should be designed for a number of apps/control-panels people
> will use, not for N items. Then we should be sure we focus the defaults
> of GNOME (and each OS that includes GNOME) around a specific enough
> target audience that we can keep the number of items low. Failing that,
> we should make it easy for site admins to focus their local defaults
> using their knowledge of their users.
> 
> There are tons of ways to limit the number of items if we aren't lazy,
> even ignoring the option to just remove silliness. Prefs don't have to
> be in the control panel. They can be made available in the contexts
> where you will use them - e.g. media prefs in the media player, file-
> related prefs in the file manager, prefs that appear when you take an
> action like plug in a device, etc.
> 
> Personally I think some time thinking through which prefs exist, and
> whether they can be moved outside the control center, would be a lot
> more valuable than continuing to try and bandaid the "too many prefs"
> problem with new control center shells.
> 
> Havoc
> 
> 
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