Re: Nautilus Sidebar

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Sat, 2006-07-01 at 12:02 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> The HIG authors would be the first to tell you to worry about good 
> design first and HIG guidelines second. i.e. if you're solving a real 
> user problem in a good way, and need to bend some HIG guidelines a 
> little, no problem.

True; and if your solution is good enough (and somewhat
generally-applicable), it may result in the HIG itself being modified to
reflect that solution... that's often how new guidelines get in there.

> i.e. think first about "what does this enable people to do with the 
> software?" and second "how easy will it be for them to do it?"

These questions somewhat relate to an oft-overlooked document on the GUP
website... the "Fundamental User Information" questions, which you can
find here:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/templates/fui_template.html

A bit heavyweight for some projects certainly (mainly because it started
as an internal doc at Sun), but it never hurts to read through it before
you start.

There's also a more recent version here, although it hasn't been
GNOMEified as yet (so I apologise in particular for the question that
mentions patents!): http://www.gnome.org/~gman/blog/10032006

Cheeri,
Calum.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems