Re: Instant apply settings in GnomeMeeting

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Damien Sandras wrote:

> Does that mean that if the user changes the size 2 times, then changes 2 other settings,
> the camera will be closed / opened 4 times and that it will take 8 seconds for the
> changes to take effect ?
> 
> What is the solution to this kind of problem ?

There are really two possible solutions.  The one that's probably going
to appear in the GNOME UI Guidelines is this:  settings that take a long
time to apply, or could have some other undesirable side-effect if a
wrong value was mistakenly instant-applied, should be grouped together
in the dialog (e.g. in a GtkFrame) with their own Apply button.  This
Apply button should apply only to that control or group of controls;
everything else in the dialog should still be instant-applied.

The other possibility: if you have a dialog where some controls are
instant-apply and some are not, then just make that whole dialog an
explicit-apply dialog.  That is, just like now, you have an Apply button
at the bottom that applies all changes, and nothing in the dialog is
instant-applied.  Personally I prefer this option, but I'm probably
going to be out-voted for the GNOME UI Guidelines  :o)

> gnomemeeting is able to register to LDAP servers.
> Basically you give your first name, your surname, a comment, your location.
> Does that mean that if the user changes each of the 4 settings, gnomemeeting
> will have to register/unregister it 4 times in a row ?

I'd say you should probably handle this the same way as the previous
example.  If a group of settings are so closely related that it normally
doesn't make sense to change one without changing one or more of the
others, they probably shouldn't be instant-apply and deserve their own
Apply button.

> How can I detect that he has changed his first name entirely if I do not want
> to change this info on the LDAP server every time he types a charachter ?
> Some user click elsewhere, some others type on enter, some others do other things...
> How to know ?

I would validate the contents of the text field only when it loses
focus, assuming this would happen whether the user clicks on another
control, or Tabs to another control, or presses Enter, or does anything
else outside the text field.  (Would the text field lose focus if the
user just clicked on the close button in the window frame?  If not, I
guess you would have to validate all your text fields before closing the
window this way, too.)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems