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

[Nicolas Mailhot <Nicolas Mailhot email enst fr>]

Le ven, 05 jan 2001 10:56:05, thristian atdot org a écrit :
> On Fri, Jan 05, 2001 at 01:46:11AM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot
> wrote:
> > Le ven, 05 jan 2001 01:12:14, Reinout van Schouwen a
> écrit :
> > > 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?
> > 
> > Nothing except :
> > 
> > * it may be confusing to some users (cursor not in app,
> app
> > stuck and no hourglass !)
> 
> But that's how it *works*! That was certainly the
> behaviour today as I
> used Win98 at work, that's what I expect when using X11 at
> home 

Well, I've found out users in Windows tend to use *one*
window in maximized mode, which is a lot more unusual in X

> > * unlike throbbers, difficult to see state of all
> windows at
> > a glance.
> 
> That's not a problem of the cursor, that's a problem of
> "difficult to
> see all windows at once" and "difficult to see state of an
> individual
> window". Difficulty 1 is almost unavoidable unless you
> remove X's
> capability to display overlapping windows, and Difficulty
> 2 is the
> problem of the app vendor.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > Cursor forms are the wrong way to go IMHO because they
> won't
> > work for more than one window at a time, and focus
> questions
> > are sufficiently confusing under X right now without
> adding
> > the complexity of « which window controls the cursor
> form ».
> 
> The complexity of "which window controls the cursor form"
> is the same
> complexity as "which app am I pointing at", which is the
> same as
> "which app has the focus" (in focus-follows-mouse). That
> is to say,
> not a lot - less than the sum total of those three
> processes together,
> because the final mental model is something like:
> 
> cursor over a window means:
> 	- the window is listening to me
> 	- the cursor tells me about that window

However a lot of users use click-to-focus mode, so that's
not as easy as you write. This behaviour is natural only in
focus-follow-mouse.

> Mind you, I wouldn't want to use the cursor for every
> possible
> interesting app state, just to tell the difference between
> "I'm ready
> and waiting for input" vs. "Hold on, I'll be with you
> shortly".

Yes, but people already want a starting state indicator.
Once they've got this, they'll want another state indicator
(all in cursor forms, since that the windoze way) What's
wrong from moving this to something attached to windows (at
least, more so than mouse pointers) before they got totally
unusable ?

Do we have to look at one place to see if the app is
starting, at another to see if it's busy, at another yet if
it's doing network stuff... 

A throbber is just an animated mouse cursor that's been
moved to a predictable place and attached to a single window
to be clearer and free the mouse cursor of this task.

-- 
Nicolas