[Fwd: RE: Your final comments on gswitchit in 2.4...]

["Sergey V. Oudaltsov" <sergey oudaltsov clients ie>]

-----Пересланное сообщение-----
From: Murray.Cumming@Comneon.com
To: sergey.oudaltsov@clients.ie
Cc: jdub@perkypants.org, jrb@redhat.com, jody@gnome.org, release-team@gnome.org
Subject: RE: Your final comments on gswitchit in 2.4...
Date: 23 Jun 2003 16:02:09 +0200

> From: Sergey V. Oudaltsov [mailto:sergey.oudaltsov@clients.ie] 
> > I finally tried it. It might be because of the very crappy 
> UI, but I can't
> Well, crappy does not give me much detail. Is it
> - difficult to understand
> - not HIG-compliant (point-by-point, if possible)
> - ??
> Actually, the more details you'd give me, the more I could fix by 2.4 
> (or 2.6 if it goes there).

Yes, I didn't go into detail because that doesn't really belong on the
private release-team list.

I will now anyway:

> > actually get it to let me choose another keyboard layout, 
> let alone switch
> Which version of XFree do you use?

Don't know. Whatever comes with RH9.

Actually the XKB Properties "Update Preview" button tells me that I have
XFree 4.3.0 and that there known problems with it.

> Did you set "Global 
> settings" (which 
> effectively disables all entry fields) or "User-defined"?

I see no such options in the "GSwitchit properties" when right-clicking the
panel applet and choosing "properties".

I think you are talking about the "XKB Properties" available from the
Applications/Desktop Preferences/Advanced/ menu. This is also a very
confusing UI, and it is not clear, without reading halfway through the Help
file, that I need to use this in order for the panel applet to work. Also,
people probably don't want to know what XKB is.

Some obvious UI-issues with the "XKB properties":
1. Notebook tabs named, Options 1 and Options 2 are unclear.
2. The use of two toggle buttons instead of radio buttons for "XKB settings
custom/global preconfigured" is confusing.
3. I don't know what those 2 buttons do. "Global preconfigured" sounds scary
to me.
4. Lots of the widgets are insensitive. It's not obvious what I need to do
to make them sensitive.
5. The combo boxes in in Options 1 do not have any default value. If no
value really means something then we should
  probably say what it means.
6. I guess most of the options in Options 1 and Options 2 should be removed
in favour of sensible defaults.
7. I don't know what "3rd level choosers" are.
8. The use of keyboard LEDs to show gswitchit status seems very hacky.
9. The preview pane: I don't know what this is supposed to show a preview
of. Why would I have to press a button to update the preview?


> > to it. I would have liked some "Do this, then do this, to see this"
> > explanation.
> There is an extensive help, but I know people never read this 

Fair enough, and you should be commended for that. But it shouldn't be quite
so necessary to read it.

> - but you 
> are the first person I heard the complains about bad UI from - so I'd 
> really appreciate more details

Here are just some points about the main panel applet:
1. The tooltip for the applet says "United Kingdom" rather than "Keyboard
switcher (United Kingdom)".
2. Every single widget in the properties window requires me to read the
documentation to know what on earth it's for.
3. The most obvious thing in that window is a frame, titled "United
Kingdom", with a UK flag in the middle, and a checkbox marked "secondary". I
don't knew what these do, but:
   - If I click on the checkbox to set it, it unsets itself again. 
   - If I click on the flag then I can choose another country's flag
instead. I would be forgiven for expecting this to switch me to a different
keyboard layout.
   - I am confused that United Kingdom appears to be hardcoded into the app.
Of course I know it isn't, but it looks that way in the UI, and there's no
way in this window to change or add different keyboard maps.
4. When I right-click on the applet, I see a groups sub-menu with my flag in
it. I don't know what a "group" is without reading the docuementation. Is
there no way to just call it "keyboard layouts" or something like that?

> (BTW, I extensively use tooltips - did 
> they make things a bit easier?).

Not really. "Make the layout accessible from the applet popup menu ONLY. No
way to switch to this layout using the keyboard" for the "seconday" checkbox
doesn't tell me much. If it is just about whether I can use a keyboard
shortcut to switch to the keyboard layout then I would expect something like
a "Can be selected via keyboard shortcut" checkbox.

> Do you expect do get some kind of 
> druid?

No, I don't see how that would help. I think you need to
- simplify the UI - it's just a keyboard switcher 
- make the UI a bit more self-explanatory.
- make it easy to change the things in the UI from where people see them in
the UI.

> I could accept this feature request - but not in 2.4 timeframe 
> definitely (even if gswitchit will not go there and I will 
> not have to 
> stick to the feature freeze - I just won't have time for 
> anything good 
> in this department).

I think the UI is terribly unready for GNOME 2.4 at the moment. I am the
least-informed member of the release-team concerning this module though.

Murray Cumming
murrayc@usa.net
www.murrayc.com
-- 
Sergey

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