user levels, disclosure triangles, and preferences (was GNOME user environment brainstorming)

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

On Wednesday, June 6, 2001, at 02:17  PM, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> > 3.) It hides preferences and features from users in a way not easy to
> > override.
> >      If there is a pref or feature that is not in the user's currently
> > selected userlevel, they will almost certainly conclude that the feature
> > isn't there. If they do know about user levels, but like their interface
> > as-is, they would need to go to the selector and select "Advanced", then
> > enable the feature they want, then go back to "Basic", and repeat this
> > procedure. And just imagine how many questions and feature requests will
> > flood in because of users who are not familiar with the user level
> > system ("How do I do X, I used to be able to...").

This is a misunderstanding of the user level feature we implemented it in 
Nautilus. Switching to a higher user level has two effects:

	1) Shows more preferences.
	2) For a few select preferences, uses a different default.

There are no other effects beyond these. A side effect of this is that any 
behavior that you get at a lower user level can be reproduced at a higher 
user level by setting the appropriate preference.

For example, beginners in Nautilus get a home directory that is not $HOME.
 Experts who want to use

Any preference that is not shown works in the standard way -- any changes 
you made while at the higher level are dormant if you go back to a lower 
user level. For example, if you turn on "show hidden files" and then go 
back to the Beginner user level which doesn't have that setting, it's 
turned back off again.

This idea you have about going a higher user level, tweaking a feature 
that was hidden, and then going back to the lower user level is not part 
of it. There's no reason to "switch back" to your old user level. And if 
you do switch back, any settings that are hidden. I don't know of anyone 
who's doing this with Nautilus.

> >      "Ok, X isn't available here, I need to go to a completely different
> > section of the UI, switch to a different user level, and then come
> > back."

This is a big problem with the current design! If someone knows that a 
preference is there, and can't find it, it's not obvious that changing the 
user level will do the trick. And there's no nice way to change the user 
level right there in the preferences.

> > Plus, it's pretty obvious that related
> > preferences should be grouped together, but user levels breaks that.

I don't understand how user levels breaks this. Groups of preferences get 
larger when you use a higher user level. User levels don't prevent you 
from grouping related preferences.

> I think user levels as used by Nautilus affect *only* the prefs
> dialog, not the UI features. That addresses at least part of your
> objections, right?
>
> The value I see in user levels is:
>  - let advanced users turn on what I affectionately term the
>    crack-smoking options
>  - without destroying the prefs dialog for normal people

Yes. And further, beginners never have to worry that something is set 
wrong, because if they have their system set to the beginner level, all 
more-advanced settings are guaranteed to be set to their standard values.

> > I believe that a better method to handle advanced preferences is the one
> > taken by MacOS, the disclosure triangle. The little right-pointing arrow
> > that expands a dialog, prefs pane, or whatever to show more complicated
> > options. The advantages of this approach are:

Saying that this is the approach taken for advanced preferences on the Mac 
OS is greatly overstating the case. It's true that the disclosure is used 
in some places to have simpler dialogs that can expand into more complex 
dialogs, but I just checked all the programs I use on Mac OS every day, 
and not a single one of them uses it to disclose additional Preferences.

I think the disclosure triangle (invented by John Sullivan, by the way) is 
a great way to have a window with a hidden piece, and works well for 
things like a file selector with some extra controls that you don't 
normally use. But I don't understand specifically how you'd apply this to 
GNOME preferences.

> Fair enough. I'd love to hear rationale for the Nautilus approach
> vs. this one from the Nautilus developers.

I don't understand a specific proposal for using the disclosure triangle 
to handle preferences, so it's hard to compare and contrast.

One of the strengths of the user level feature is that there are no hidden 
preferences that have an effect. If the preference is not there, that 
means it's at the standard setting.

> > >  - System Settings
> > >      (using Darin's prefs vs. settings distinction; systemwide
> > >       settings that can be gotten wrong, vs. user prefs that
> > >       can't. e.g. dialup networking setup, time and date, etc.
> > >       Probably would contain Red Hat specific tools in our
> > >       distribution, but Ximian Setup Tools could also go here)

My Preferences vs. Settings distinction is not intended to be two separate 
concepts for the user. I don't necessarily think we should use these terms 
in the UI to distinguish the two. However it would be good to put settings 
that can actually make the computer not work in a special place, separate 
from Preferences that are really just about "how I prefer to work". Apple 
doesn't do a very good job on this in Mac OS X, and it's an area we could 
do even better in.

    -- Darin