Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus user testing at MIT

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

Hello Nicholas and others,

First, excuse me for just dropping into this discussion; I've recently 
subscribed to the gnome-gui list and would like to comment on this article.

Nicolas Mailhot wrote:

> > Anyhow, yes, I agree that the UI should remain fully
> > usable
> > while the cursor displays the hourglass.
>
> Wich isn't the case ; an hourglass is a difficult pointer.

To me, this sounds like you (or the previous poster) have misunderstood 
the point of an hourglass pointer. Which, IMO, is to give a visual cue 
that the UI is incapable of processing commands (clicks) *at the 
position of the cursor* for as long as the hourglass is displayed. 
Hence, the UI is by definition not usable while the cursor displays the 
hourglass!

> > Again, the reason I like the hourglass is just that it is
> > a *known* mechanism for informing the huge base of Windoze
> > users that the OS is launching your application.  Why have
> > we got to reinvent the wheel? 
>
> Because the window wheel is square, that's why.

Don't be distracted by the way the win9x interface has implemented this 
idea. Instead, take a look at the OS/2 Presentation Manager (plus the 
Workplace Shell on top of it). The default wait icon is a clock instead 
of an hourglass, but that's not important - the point is that it is only 
displayed when the application _beneath_ the cursor is unable to respond 
to mouseclicks. This could also be the desktop itself, when the OS is 
very busy performing a task at a given moment.

> Using cursor forms to inform a user of its applications
> state don't work, because there is *one* mouse pointer and
> *lots* of app windows. Web browser designers recognized this
> and created throbbers for this very reason.

I think it also has to do with the fact that web pages take 
exceptionally long to load, compared with the launching of an 
application. What is wrong with the wait cursor above a application 
that's busy, given that the busy-state will last no longer than a few 
seconds?

> 3. embed your throbber in a generic place (title bar, task
> list, dock, splash screen, start monitor-applet, whatever)

- title bar: inconvenient when your app is starting up and you don't 
know the window dimensions yet;

- task list : Gnome already has something like this, when an app is 
starting you can see its name in the tasklist applet with a hourglass 
icon next to it;

- dock : how is a dock different from a task list?

- splash screen: you really don't want all your apps to have a splash 
screen!

Your ideas remind me of the blinking "LED" in the CDE launchpad to indicate activity.
Not a bad idea in itself, because if you're running X at a terminal 
you'll never know if the system is busy otherwise because you don't have 
harddisk lights or sounds. It's just that the CDE implementation is, 
well, quite uncool.

regards,

--
Reinout van Schouwen