Re: Testing & A Suggestion :)

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom idecnet com>]

robsc dingoblue net au (2000-11-26 at 0659.13 +1100):
> Theres nothing really weird here. you're just an advanced user. I'd
> venture to say that your settings are uncomfortable for some less

My sister is a newbie and copied some ideas from me, and discovered
others alone. Of course, she has someone that shows that she can put
things in different places, and can explain her how, and she is
curious like me. :]

> experienced users. we're trying to make gnome more accessible,
> remember? But lets not bring up the 'usability-of-linux-by-a-beginner'
> issue here, or we'll cook a storm.

Yes, most times I think newbies just need to see things and they start
to do their own, I have seen it with my sister and some users at
Univ. I think they have crossed the line where they realize that they
can change things, not like in other OSs that are limited. But
defaults should be nice if advanced can change them, anyway.

> Yeah - it's a royal pain for having lots of NS's - but how do you
> propose to fix this?
> 	Change the windowing system, or change the indexing system? We
> can't really do the first (can we?) so improving the indexing is good
> for me.

It is a problem I never found the right solution. Some kind of
indexing seems to be the obvious, but how?

By letter? Some windows change title a lot (NS, xterms if you use the
title trick), others never (gkrellm), others clone the title ad
infinitum (some web forums just say "Post" instead of "Post about
Foobar", ie).

By launch time? Not bad, you always know who is the new one, but they
also change position as soon as you close some windows and open some
new more.

By last used? Not bad either. I think that when changing windows via
keyboard it works cos it reduces key hits, but I dunno if it can apply
here, cos it will reorder menu a lot which seems to be a bad idea.

I guess the launch time is one of the less bad options. More ideas?

BTW, IIRC, last Sawfish versions allow you to decide it you want
unique names, but maybe it could be set in default configs to help a
bit.

> > Yep. For me I would keep it to never use menus. For default, I guess
> > that as soon as the buttons become unreadable, they should convert to
> > one button and menu per family, adding some kind of arrow (pointing
> > where?) or drop widget decor (reactangle sometimes, varies with theme)
> > or "..." (abused, already in menus if you set them to use that) to
> > show they are now multiple items all in one.
> I'd say having the name of the application, some sort of Arrow/specia
> character, and a number indicating how many entries there are for that
> App?

The number whould be pretty fine with a "x" (plus the same widget used
for drop down items? be it arrow, square or whatever, so it matches
the rest of widgets and user sees clearly that it is a selector), for
example "Netscape x8" and when you click you see the list of 8 windows
and "Netscape x8" becomes the title or footer (varies about where the
screen edge is) saying "Netscape - 8 items" separated with a separator
from real items.

For example for panel on top or side top (they are painted towards
bottom):

Netscape - 8 items
------------------------------ (separator)
themes.org - find themes for X
gnome.org official site
......

For panels in bottom or side bottom (painted towards top):

themes.org - find themes for X
gnome.org official site
......
------------------------------ (separator)
Netscape - 8 items

["......" are the other 6 entries, one per line]

Another detail: if a Netscape window has focus, the buttons should be
pressed, be it in multimode or single mode, and if in multimode, the
active item should be marked with some kind of mark (asterisk like in
sawfish window menu?) but not play again the grayed / full colour or
normal / highlighted games again, that is for other things, and we do
not want to confuse users, but help find things.

> > Desktop with names? I set mine to plain ordered words, but you can set
> > them to things like "Terms" or "Netscapes". BTW, difficult for you,
> > not for me (I guess I never put my brain in "no gear"). :]
> It's not a 'no gear' thing - it's a disuse thing. I sometimes spend
> 4-5 hours coding in 2 viewports - and then you expect me to remember
> which place I put my irc client? comeon :) 

I always put things in the same place, so I can pass days without
using something, and I will remember. IRC client in workspace 1,
bottom left viewport, last time I launched it 3 or 4 days ago. I guess
I have habits, I can do that with all windows I use at least a few
times.

> Anyway, I've emailed tigert gnome org (listed as the author of the
> TaskList) asking about this additional feature - hopefully should
> hear back from him soon.

Wrong mail, he did the icons, not the code. And now that you are also
trying to contact the coders, please tell them that the task list
should follow the defaults like other apps, it ignores the "show icons
in menus" settings (those icons are Tigert's) while most of apps
do. :]

GSR