Re: [evolution-patches] Much improved search bar patch

[Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj novell com>]

On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 14:39 -0400, Nat Friedman wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 12:20 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> > to be honest, I don't like the ui - I much prefer the current dialog
> > window (which is probably more to the liking of our target audience
> > anyway since they are most likely used to the search/find dialog that is
> > in Microsoft Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and basically
> > every other application that has a search/find tool other than Firefox
> > which afaict, just did it to be different)
>
> I take issue with the notion that we have to suck in all the ways that
> Windows sucks in order to meet the approval of some ill-defined target
> audience.

I take issue with the notion that we have to suck as badly as FireFox (a program which I refuse to use because I hate it so much)

the notion I keep getting is that we're targetting people converting from Windows because, well, that's what we keep testing.

I will agree that the current dialog isn't perfect in that people like me (and afaik, most people?) run applications fullscreen and so searching for a word or phrase within a document bringing up a dialog that covers part of said document isn't ideal (it's something that has frustrated me in the past too), but that doesn't mean we should just blindly copy the FireFox solution.

"Emacs works this way! Lets copy emacs! That's an intuitive interface!"

> Second, people really like the search in Firefox.  We should try this
> out and see how it goes.  If it is a colossal failure, we can revert.

who really likes it? I don't, I think it sucks[1] and I think it's ugly.

why not do user testing first? it's not like the patch couldn't be applied in a separate build that Anna's team uses to test real-world people on to see if it really is an improvement.

I just don't want to change the ui for the sake of changing the ui, and afaict, that's what's going on here. I thought this was the kind of stuff we wanted to get away from, but I keep seeing it happen and it frustrates me.

If Anna's testing finds that it really is more intuitive for users than the current dialog then I'll shutup.

>From what I gather reading people's responses to this change already is that they already know it's going to flunk UI testing because 2 search bars in the same window is, without question, confusing.

Just because a handful of people seem to like it in FireFox doesn't mean it's going to work well in Evolution anyway. FireFox doesn't have a search bar at the top too, that makes a huge difference. Maybe this is why they didn't implement the same ui in ThunderFox (or whatever it's called this week) and instead opted to keep it the old way? Or maybe I just have an older version without the change, I dunno.


1]

Why I Don't Like It
----------------------

How do you get to this search dingus? You navigate to the TOP of the window over to the Edit menu and then select the "Find in this page" menu item.

Where does this thing appear in the window? At the BOTTOM.

Where is the user least likely to look? At the BOTTOM.

Why is this? Because that's not where their attention is.


ok, if that didn't convince you...


Where is every other user-interactive component? At the TOP.

Where is the user focusing their eyes when they go to search? At the TOP.

Why is this? Because that's where the menus are and because most people start searching a document from TOP to BOTTOM.

-- 
Jeffrey Stedfast
Evolution Hacker - Novell, Inc.
fejj ximian com  - www.novell.com