Re: [Usability] Re: [Epiphany] epiphany toolbar/bookmarks

[Roberto Rosselli Del Turco <rosselli ling unipi it>]

Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> 
> My personal opinion is that GNOME should not aim to make this very low
> part of user base happy. Obviously it's worth to improve "compatibility"
> with the hierarchic way of organizing bookmarks but keep it just because
> it's what power users are used to is not a good idea. Temporary
> regressions (for someone) are worth when the percentage of the user
> that will likely benefit of the changes is way higher than the
> percentage of the users that are perfectly happy with current status.
> IHMO current system is already an improvement for most users, compared
> to a hierachich system like the galeon one.

Two of the above statements are both crucial and, IMHO, unsubstantiated, 
namely:

1) that the ephy-bookmarks-unhappy are just a "very low part of user base";

2) that the new bookmarks system is an improvement for most users.

With regard to 1) I can't but wonder how is it possible to say that 
since 99% of all browser users (on most platforms) are used to 
hyerarchical bookmark menus. Perhaps it's not optimal, perhaps is under- 
and misused, but this is what people expect to find in a web browser: 
you can easily move a Window user from IE to Mozilla (and then perhaps 
to Linux altogether), but I doubt that new and ex-Windows users would be 
less than puzzled by a completely different bookmarking method *without* 
having the chance to import their bookmarks and getting on thanks to a 
compatible system.

Wrt to 2), I really don't know, all the more so because I still haven't 
played much with Epiphany. It could well be, though, that there are 
people out there who won't ever like the new method: I, for one, like 
the idea of a well organized hyerarchical bookmark menu/system, which is 
why perhaps I haven't used Epiphany a little more. Judging from the 
reactions on gnomedesktop there are many users who find the new system 
unwieldy: at this moment, it is not possible to rule out the idea that a 
large part of present and future users won't feel completely at ease 
with the new system. In some cases you just can't decide in favor of the 
One True Way because it simply doesn't exist: which explains why window 
managers offer a "focus follows mouse" option without forcing it on 
their users.

Considering that Epiphany has been included as an official GNOME 2.4 
module, I would take some time to make usability tests and polls to make 
light on this issue. Some sort of compatibility with the traditional 
system would be the definitive solution.

Don't get me wrong: innovation is necessary and I welcome it, thanks 
Marco for the work done!

Ciao

-- 
Roberto Rosselli Del Turco      e-mail:	rosselli at cisi.unito.it
Dipartimento di Scienze			rosselli at ling.unipi.it
del Linguaggio			Then spoke the thunder	DA
Universita' di Torino		Datta: what have we given?  (TSE)

   Hige sceal the heardra,     heorte the cenre,
   mod sceal the mare,       the ure maegen litlath.  (Maldon 312-3)