Re: Questions regarding Control-Center.

[Jens Lautenbacher <jens tellux de>]

Owen Taylor <otaylor@redhat.com> writes:

> Consider what happens when you bring up a capplet, make changes in it,
> and then switch to another capplet, before applying your
> changes. Using notebook tabs for active capplets is an attempt to
> solve a UI flaw in KDE's control panel where unapplied changes can 
> easily be lost.

Sorry, but I don't see this as a design flaw. switching away from a
panel may a) simply discard the changes because a user knows what she
did or b) - as I assume that you will not have the same opinion about
that - on closing the whole center a popup may come up which tells
about unapplied changes. It would be possible to e.g. mark the
"unapplied" capplets in the tree by printing them red.

The current approach feels clumsy. The tree should be looked upon as a
way to browse through possible customization groups, where you can
play with the capplets options and even -- if you like -- press a try
or apply button :-). If not, no problem, let's just switch to the next
one. But please no user visible "active capplets". The user isn't
interested in this. (this is of course all IMHO but nevertheless I
think that a good UI is important. Maybe it's one of the most
important points about gnome.)
  
I want to stress that IMHO possibility a) is the sane way but perhaps 
b) can avoid the troubles you see with such an aproach.

> Perhaps your objection would be addressed if there was an option such
> that switching away from a capplet with no unapplied changes caused
> that capplet to be closed or hidden. 

No. that's not my point. I don't want to use the tree to fill a
shopping cart of active capplets. I want it to browse through options, 
change them -- or not --, apply the changes -- or not -- and switch
happily between the single groups.

> We discussed doing that, but decided against making that the default
> because having notebooks close themselves sometimes, but not others
> probably would be confusing to novice users. 

Of course. as said above it wouldn't help and would be even worse.
I hope I made my point clear and you consider it as a valid concern
and not as stepping on your toes,

Regards,
	jtl