Re: Proposal for default panel layout

[James Ramsey <jjramsey_6x9eq42 yahoo com>]

--- Matthew Butterick <matthewb mutagenetics com>
wrote:
> In a general sense, eventually any UI issue comes
> down to solving a
> problem of how the user & the software communicate. 

[snip]

> To build a "user interface" you need to have a
> concept of a "user". One
> of the things the gnome-gui project seems to be
> missing is an adequate
> definition of who the target user(s) are.  The
> well-known GUIs -- Win,
> Mac, Be, Next, et al -- were each designed to appeal
> to different types
> of users.

[snip]

> 
> When I see a call to action like "let's make it
> intuitive" it begs the
> question "intuitive FOR WHOM"? If you don't know,
> then all that's
> definite is you're *changing* the UI, but you can't
> necessarily say
> you're *improving* it.

Exactly. When I proposed what I proposed, I made the
assumption that the user may do things that end up 
seeming irreversible to him or her, even if they
really
are reversible, and that the means to reverse the 
"damage" that current GNOME users take for granted may

not even occur to a new GNOME user.

My solution was to make sure that a baseline 
configuration sufficient to access the functionality
of
GNOME was *always* present. The baseline that I chose
was the menu panel and a pager. Above this baseline, 
users can tweak and customize to their hearts'
content,
and if they screw up their customizations, they still
have a baseline config to fall back on.

Now I'm assuming that a user who removes the menu
panel
or pager panel may not know how to get it back. This 
assumption probably seems odd to most current GNOME 
users because the means of getting the panel back is
dog simple; one right-clicks on a panel and clicks on
the entry "Create new panel -> Menu panel". Most 
current GNOME users have probably have done this a few
times. However, I can see the possibility of users not
being able to figure out what the current users take
for granted.

A thought experiment for everybody:

1) User is doing some "stuff" (word processing, GIMP,
whatever)
2) User removes menu panel for whatever reason--maybe
it looks funny to them, maybe he or she is just 
curious
3) User spends next few hours doing the same "stuff".
4) User needs an app that isn't launchable from the 
panel with all the buttons.
5) User thinks "Well, I'll go the the main menu and, 
um, oops, I got rid of the main menu, didn't I?"

What happens next?

An old-hand GNOME user might say, "The user 
right-clicks on a panel ..."

How does the user know to right-click on a *panel*? 
Said user may simply think of it as a menu *bar* not
a menu *panel* and not associate it with the panel
that
holds buttons and applets, since the two panels hardly
look alike. Same goes for the pager.

"The menu item they chose said "Remove *this 
panel*" 

But it has been a few hours since the menu panel was
removed, and the operative term in that menu entry is
"Remove". The user by this time has probably forgotten
that the entry had the words "this panel" on it. What
he or she remembers is that something was removed that
was needed.

"Can the user use the online help?"

Only if the user knows how to access the online help. 
If the panel with the buttons and applets doesn't have

a launcher for the help browser, then the user is 
probably sunk unless he or she launches Nautilus and
launches the help browser from there. However, the
user
is probably not going to launch Nautilus because he or
she is looking for info on the menu bar, not the file
manager.

The users I am envisioning would be users who would
run
into problems like this.



=====


----I am a fool for Christ. Mostly I am a fool.----


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