Re: eject buttons on the places menu

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Jan 6, 2007, at 2:41 AM, Diego Escalante wrote:
> On 1/5/07, Who <mailforwho googlemail com> wrote:
> > Perhaps it's time for me to mail this mockup around again:
> >
> > http://mailforwho.googlepages.com/RemoveableDevices.png
>
> Very nice.

... If a little overdone. I predict that a substantial proportion of 
people presented with that interface would click the "Eject Now" button 
quickly because it looked like they needed to, and then wonder why they 
couldn't use the disk any more.

Perhaps including a small Eject button in the status bar would work.

> ...
> > Also notice the 'eject' button in the places sidebar (which I admit,
> > should look like a button)
>
> I would prefer a context menu.
> In my experience, people assume after some hours using a computer for
> the first time that since right click always gives them extra options
> and right click is almost everywhere they can go all around right
> clicking and finding extra options.
> ...

Like Calum said, I think you're greatly overestimating the proportion 
of people who know about shortcut menus. And even if they do, the 
mental model is "the computer designers hid some things in menus just 
to make life harder for you".

It's like those Web pages you have to scrub with the cursor to find the 
links, but worse: instead of just moving the cursor everywhere, you 
have to right-click everywhere.

> ...
> I can recall users who can't find the Font Preferences no matter
> there's a Path "Preferences > Font" and they have months using GNOME.
> ...

I'm not sure what that has to do with shortcut menus, but ... In both 
Windows and Mac OS, the GUI font settings are in the same window as 
other user GUI appearance settings, which makes sense. Since Gnome puts 
them in a place that is neither consistent nor obviously better, it's 
no wonder people can't find them.

As for the original topic, I agree with Kalle Vahlman: putting extra 
controls inside menu items might make Tomboy individually easier to 
use, but it makes Gnome as a whole slower to use, because people can be 
less sure of the behavior of *any* menu item in any program.

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