Re: A few responses

["James M. Cape" <jcape jcinteractive com>]

Chuck Dale wrote:
> 
> [problems with Windows Help Browser]
> 
> I agree with most of these problems. I was, however, very impressed when
> I had a quick look through the MSDN stuff (for Visual Studio). The tree
> view made things very easy to understand, and the full text index (huge
> list of all words in texts) is extremely useful for finding exactly what
> you want.
> 
> > 6. Toolbar with only three items on it. The Windows 98 version groups
> > them off, but I'm not sure we can (or would want) to do that in
> > Nautilus. Toolbars need at least 60% of it's space in use to look pretty
> > (depending on the size of the toolbar, of course), and having "Next",
> > "Up", and "Previous" buttons would keep those controls (which are
> > universal to all of GNOME's docs, at least) constantly visible. Combined
> > with "Back", "Forward", "Print", and possibly "Index" you've got a
> > pretty decent looking toolbar with all the major navigation controls
> > visible all the time. In this case, it's improving beauty and usability
> > at the same time.
> 
> Can I put a vote forward for only having three items on the Toolbar?
> 
> In the Windows vocabulary I would consider myself a "Power User" but I
> rarely use buttons other than Up, Back, Forward. Same for Gnome apps.
> 
> All functions such as Save and Print are intuitively found in the pull
> down menus. Let users add more buttons if they would like but otherwise
> keep it extremely simple.
> 
> Some thoughts,
> Chuck

Well, they may be found in the menus, but there is then a *huge* waste
of space on the toolbar.

[ File   Edit   View   Settings   Help                            ]
[ **Back** ***Up*** *Forwrd* "all  this  space  is  just  wasted" ]
[ Location: [________________________________________________][V] ]

The point is that while you may only use three of the buttons, the fact
that the toolbar is arranged horizontally forces have more unless you
want to waste all that space. I can construct screenshots to further
demonstrate if necessary.

    Jim Cape
    http://www.jcinteractive.com

    "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them
     pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
        -- Winston Churchill