Re: UI changes for control-center

[William Jon McCann <william jon mccann gmail com>]

Hi,

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Shaun McCance<shaunm gnome org> wrote:
...
> The first three are fine by me.  The last two are much more
> substantive and would require documentation work.
>
> On a personal level, I'm not fond of making window shading
> even more difficult to find.
>
> How do you know that these make the user experience better?
> Do you have any data on how many users use these features?

You are welcome to do a study to see if people need the options in the
window capplet.  I know what you'll find if you ask the right people:
"What is window shading?"  But this isn't the point.  The point is
figuring out what kind of experience we want to provide - and then
executing on it.  The way we design our interfaces and the interfaces
that we to provide say everything about what we value.  If we show
options for tweaking window management settings then we are saying
that we think tweaking window management settings is something that
you *should* do.  This is especially true when the tool is a first
class preference dialog - on the same level as sound, appearance,
displays, etc.

The same goes for the Interface tab.  It is clearly not the story we
want to be telling.

Also, as mentioned in another message, the window preferences is
strictly a metacity tweak tool.  It doesn't apply to other window
managers.  Perhaps if someone really wants it they can move it to the
metacity module as an optional tool.  Otherwise, it doesn't belong in
control center.

> I know of at least one piece of commercial software that
> uses Alt+click for its own purposes.  They have to instruct
> GNOME users to change the window movement key to use that
> feature.  You'll be making their troubleshooting docs harder.

Well, I can't really respond to this without particulars.  But it
doesn't sound like a good reason to me.

> I'm not saying we need to include every configuration option
> under the sun.  But you need some sort of criteria for deciding
> whether to remove something.  And it really seems like people
> are using "I don't use it" as their sole criterion, which just
> isn't good enough.

Not at all.  What people are you referring to?  I don't know anyone
who is thinking about this as shallowly as you suggest.  My concern
isn't about whether I use it or not.  As I said above, it is about
what story we are trying to tell, the experience we want to provide,
and about how we show our values.  This capplet and tab are poor
design decisions - and need to go.

Jon