Re: New Control Centre

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Feb 7, 2007, at 12:53 AM, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 19:19 +0000, Alex Jones wrote:
> ...
> > IMO this was just a proper bad idea. If we had a proper control centre
> > app like Mac OS's
>
> what does the Mac OS CC have that is so much missing in our new CC?
> ...

The main difference I see is that in the Mac's System Preferences, all 
the system-wide preferences are presented in the same window. Clicking 
"Show All" in the toolbar returns from the current panel to the list of 
panels. (The Mac equivalents of Gnome's "Device Manager", "Keyring 
Manager", "Network Tools", "System Log", and "System Monitor" are 
separate programs not presented here, because they're not preferences. 
And the Mac equivalent of Gnome's "File Management" preferences is the 
Finder's Preferences window, because those options are app-specific.)

This has a few advantages:

-   Loading the chosen preference panel into the window is quicker (and
    calmer) than launching a separate preferences applet for each panel.

-   Because the "Show All" button is always in the same place on the
    screen, navigating back to the list of panels is quicker than with
    separate windows, each with their own remembered screen position and
    therefore their own placement of the close button. (This is more
    important if you're exploring the panels, either because you're
    curious or because you're unsure which panel contains the preference
    you want.)

-   Once you're done, there's only one close button to click instead of
    two.

A disadvantage is that you can't see the list of panels and have a 
panel open at the same time, or have two or more panels open at the 
same time. I can't remember ever needing to do that, though.

The other thing that stands out between the Gnome Control Center and 
System Preferences is that the latter is much more compact -- 600 
pixels wide, height varying dependent on the current panel. G-C-C has a 
redundant category listing on the left, and labels icons to their right 
rather than underneath. These both waste a lot of space, requiring a 
scrollbar (ugh) to list all the categories. (System Preferences uses a 
scrollbar as a last resort, if you're both at 640*480 or 800*600 and 
have any third-party panels installed.) It's ironic that the list of 
categories contributes to the need for a scrollbar, and the presence of 
a scrollbar in turn justifies the list of categories.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/