Re: Power settings ui freeze break request

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hey Shaun,

On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-09-01 at 12:12 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> The current power panel settings have a few usability issues that it
>> would be great to have fixed for 3.2. I have recently been working on
>> a new design for these that could be implemented in the next couple of
>> days (ie. before the string freeze). The relevant bug:
>>
>> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=657916
>>
>> The new design has been reviewed by several members of the design
>> team. I've checked the user documentation and, from what I can tell,
>> these changes will not have much impact there.
>
> The basic UI reshuffling will affect about a dozen pages.

Just to be clear, the request is just to change one set of controls -
it is to remove two check boxes and to rearrange two comboboxes. The
critical power option will be unaffected, as will the status part of
the panel (the bit that tells you about battery charge, etc).

...

> I'm a bit more concerned about this from the bug:
>
>  Uses non-recommended terminology, such as 'sleep' (should be
>  'suspend') and 'computer' (doesn't work for tablets)."
>
> We've been bouncing around on sleep/suspend in the help, mostly
> because the UI bounces around. I'm happy to fix that if we've
> decided suspend is the word. That's a few more pages.

Ensuring consistent use of 'suspend' is one goal here, although the UI
changes are not dependent on that change.

> But "computer"? grep tells me 110 pages use that word. That's
> just in gnome-help. Who decided that's not recommended? What
> are we supposed to use instead? System? Device? Thingamajig?

Again, this isn't essential to the UI break.

The system information panel uses the term 'Device'. I try to avoid
referring to the machine itself in my UI design work.

> And how are tablets not computers?

I can certainly imagine some tablets being thought of as mobile
devices in the same vein as mobile phones. I see the word 'computer'
as becoming less relevant in general; it doesn't seem to tally with
machines that are always on, mobile and cloud enabled. That's a
discussion for another time though, I suspect. ;)

Allan
--
IRC:  aday on irc.gnome.org
Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/