Re: To answer your question about the upcoming Style-Guide...

["Dan Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

>maybe, but I'd say everyone should have the ability to decide that for
>himself, don't you?
>
>and that requires that he or she first of all KNOWS that it's possible.
I'll
>say that again: I've done the tests and they show that with a single menu
as
>the default people won't even TRY to create anything else.


Your tests are incomplete.  Did users try to create icons on the taskbar
when there were pre-existing ones?  I've seen only one other user besides
myself with a hand-modified quicklaunch bar in 98, and the only reason I did
it is because I realized he had a good thing going.

How many users do you know who have modified their start menus by hand?

>
>> >for whom? for everyone? I doubt that. if I use my machine for pagemaker
70%
>> >of the time, I would like to start it with a SINGLE click. but I would
not
>> >want the civ2 scenario editor waste space on the panel. other people
could
>> >want it the other way around.
>> >they should not only be able to have it whatever way they want, they
also
>> >have to KNOW that it's possible.
>>
>> Nice little thing about documentation not being read.
>
>true, but it's a fact that people DON'T read docs. they look into the
online
>help when they're lost. but in this case, they won't get lost, they'll
>simply miss 90% of the functionality without noticing.


Did adding the icons to the gnome panel cause your users to drag and drop
icons from somewhere else onto the panel?

>
>> >> app category rather than splitting the gnomeprint up.
>> >no, sorry. I don't see that, it's not evident. it's again a
>> >single-point-of-reference philosophy. take a look into "real life".
there
>> is
>> >no equivalent to this anywhere. it's not in the experience of the
people.
>>
>> Want to go to the store?  Go downtown.
>or to the shop around the corner, or the one across town or mail-order,
>internet...
>
>> Want to go to the office?  Go downtown.
>by car, bike, train - whatever you like.
>
>> Want to go get some dinner?  Go downtown.
>or across town, call-a-pizza, ...
>
>
>there really aren't many real-life cases where you have exactly one way
that
>you cannot change to do a thing. maybe there really are, but they aren't
>common enough to build a gui around this principle.


We're drowning in analogies here, man, but missing the point.  *EVERYTHING*
I've ever heard about UIs is consistency reigns supreme.  You can have lots
of ways to load something, but those ways have to work to load something
else.  This links back to my original mantra that "Everything that is
consistent between applications should be accessable consistently between
applications".  You can have multiple paths to the end, but the paths have
to work for *everything* of that type.

There is definite value to non-gnomeprint symlinks and drawers on the panel.
But, for newbies, there should probably be few symlinks(only the critical
apps everyone uses) and no drawers("so all I have is games and networking
apps?  where are my word processors?", extend for every single category).

A recent drawer would be a very good thing.

>
>
>> >> or to bring up all apps of a given category.
>> >nothing stops us from allowing dynamic icons to start apps or open
folders,
>> >does it? cde has a few examples of this (clicking on the clock/calender
>> >opens the calender app. now THAT is intuitive, isn't it?).
>>
>> In general we don't have situations like this.
>
>no, but the point was that dynamic information and folders aren't
exclusive.


No, but in general they aren't, and when the user generates them like you
want...