Re: Insanely long messages in gnome-lokkit

["R.I.P. Deaddog" <maddog linuxhall org>]

On Mon, 1 Oct 2001, Alan Cox wrote:

> Seriously. Its a wizard based interface. It is there to make it easy for end
> users by throwing the info they need at them before asking the questions.
> This is an important piece of UI design because end users do not understand
> firewalls and do not use firewall tools often enough to internalize either the
> background to the decisions or the controls.
[......]
> Gnome-lokkit is a tool aimed at your grandmother.

Then it's THIS point that needs some consideration. Do average Joe users
have such patience to scroll and scroll to read such long messages? And
do they have the necessary background to read and understand all the
jargons inside the text, such as "UDP", "port", "snooping attack"? It
sounds to me that the wording of the paragraphs are for sysadmins, not
grandparents.

For normal behaviour, newbie users will usually look at the first page,
scroll down a bit more, and lose their patience and click "next". Some
are lazy enough to not scrolling the text at all.

Besides, these 2 messages can be shortened a bit after rephrasing. For
example, in high security mode, after mentioning *ONLY* what kind of
connections are allowed, it goes on with even longer message to tell
what kind of connections are not allowed. Isn't this clumsy and
unnecessary?

Abel