Re: Call for constructive user criticism.

[John Kodis <kodis jagunet com>]

On Sun, Aug 01, 1999 at 01:18:48PM -0500, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

>    1. A team of *users* that would tell us what they would like to see
>       in GNOME:
> 
>       a. To make the interface easier. 
>       b. To make it more intuitive to people.

I've been playing with the panel for the past few weeks, and have
found a few rough edges that could probably be smoothed out pretty
quickly:

  + It's needlessly difficult to adjust the type, location, and size
    of a panel.  There's one menu item for conversion between edge and
    corner panels, another configuration page to change from
    horizontal to vertical and to pick a corner, and yet another
    configuration page to pick a panel size.

    At the least, these adjustments could be placed on the same page.
    Even better, this page could have a diagram showing four edge
    panels and eight corner panels, and the panel type could be
    changed by clicking on the desired panel type in the diagram.
    Better still would be some means of reconfiguring the panel by
    dragging it to the desired edge or corner.

  + I don't see any reason why the panel has to be glued to an edge.
    I can easily envision a screen layout that has two edge panels,
    one below the other, along the top of the screen.  For example,
    the top panel could be devoted to applets, while the lower panel
    could be devoted to holding iconized applications.

  + It would be handy to be able to configure a panel, and save this
    panel configuration for future use.  The panel control menu would
    have to get several new entries: "New", Open...", and "Save
    as...", similar to a document-oriented application.  "New" would
    create a default panel, either empty or with a selection of common
    applets pre-installed.

  + There are some fun things that could be done with "greedy
    applets" -- applets that expand to occupy all vacant space in a
    panel.  Imagine a horizontal edge panel with a few applets on the
    left, a few iconized apps on the right, and a lot of vacant space
    between.  Now imagine a "greedy" version of the fish applet, which
    allows Wanda to swim back and forth over this entire stretch of
    the panel, rather than being confined to a tiny square area.
    Cool, huh?

  + There are quite a few clock applets.  This is probably a good
    thing, as peoples taste in clocks will vary widely (BTW, I'd like
    one that looks just like xclock, but can't find one that I like).
    However, there are so many clock applets that it's hard to spot
    the non-clock applets in the Utility menu.  I'd suggest either a
    separate "Clocks" applet menu item, or else a grand unified clock
    application that can select and launch any of the simple clock
    applets. 


>    2. A team coordinator that would compile and maintain all of these
>       ideas and comments.  He would need to provide a document on the
>       web to allow the developers to address those usability issues.

Congratulations to our new team coordinator.  Thanks for stepping up
to the task.  I'd suggest that one of your first executive decisions
should be picking the mailing list to carry these discussions.  Both
gnome-list and gnome-gui-list seem appropriate, but it would probably
be best to appoint one or the other as the official home of this thread.

-- John Kodis.