Re: gnome-games 2.16.0 released and branched for 2.17

[karderio <karderio gmail com>]

Hi :o)

On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 22:38 -0500, Richard Hoelscher wrote:
> Jason D. Clinton said:
> >> [*] ... Among other things, bugs like #352084 simply broke my will to
> >> hack.
> >
> > "Fullscreen menu item changes when selected"
> >
> > Huh?
> 
> 100% HIG compliance is a nice generic goal to shoot for... but I really
> just can't muster putting up a fight against this sort of bug. At the very
> least, beat it back once, and it will show up again every cycle. Same
> thing with dozens of other bugs like adding card counting strategies to
> blackjack or the guys that prefer the old pixelated-and-filtered look of
> card indexes to new ones that are vector based. :)

I would like to say that for me the HIG is an important part of GNOME. I
believe having consistent interfaces is a great advantage to the user,
and the HIG contains very good advice to achieve both this and user
friendly, accessible interfaces.

> FWIW, my objection to #352084 would have been simply be that if we do a
> change as dramatic as going to fullscreen mode, maybe it really does makes
> sense to change the label to "Leave Fullscreen" rather than fret about
> users who would get confused by the new label (problem is in between the
> keyboard and chair) or screen reader limitations (problem is in the screen
> reader(?)).

I don't agree that the problem lies with the user, but I do agree that
there is no use discussing the issue to no end. Discussions on the
usability list tend to go on and on and on - not surprising, as
usability is a rather complex and sometimes subjective issue.

Everything seems to suggest to me that the HIG was *very* well thought
out, I have been studying it for the past months in view of suggesting
an eventual update. I have found very few circumstances where the guide
did not provide well founded suggestions, and any changes I am currently
considering suggesting are mainly just precisions.

To try and cut the discussion short, and excuse me if I seem a little
curt, why not just remove checkboxes completely from GTK+ and replace
them with menu items or buttons that change their text to reflect their
state ? This may sound a bit ridiculous, but the point is : remain
consistent :)

Anyhow, what caused me to write this rebuttal was that I am planning, in
the near future, to conduct a sort of audit of GNOME interfaces and
submitting many bugs against the HIG. This thread got me even more
worried than usual about encountering developer resistance/resentment of
the HIG. Perhaps in order to reduce the burden on devs, I could file one
"HIG compliance and usability" bug per app, rather than per problem.

Love, Karderio.