Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

["James M. Cape" <jcape jcinteractive com>]

Michael Stearne wrote:
> 
> Thomas Hedler wrote:
> >
> > On 06-Aug-99 Ben Frantzdale wrote:
> > > One other anoying thing is that you can't eject the CD with the
> > > button on
> > > the CDROM. and you can't eject the floppy with the physical eject
> > > button
> > > withought unmounting it first else the computer complians :-)
> > > --Ben
> >
> > Where is the problem? If Windows accesses the CDROM and you open the
> > eject button, you would get a blue screen. If you press <ESC> or
> > <retry> it sometimes crashes completely. Do you really want this? ;-)
> >
> > Only because windows has this behaviour it needn't to be a good
> > behaviour!!!
> >
> > The users have to learn some things. If they don't want to learn
> > something they should use windows or better buy a Mac.
> 
> How will Linux ever be a desktop platform with this thinking?
> 
> Users shouldn't HAVE to learn things, they should have the option of
> learning things if they want to.  You can avoid the the blue screen, by
> locking the eject button on a CD drive like Macs do.  Mounting and
> unmounting of media is done right on the Mac, why can't this method just
> be used in Linux?  Have a "Trash" Can on the Desktop and drag the CD
> there to unmount it. There is no reason to re-invent the wheel if there
> is a suitable solution out there. Just because a method is used by
> another OS besides Linux doesn't mean it is wrong.
> 
> Michael Stearne

Just because it's on a Mac doesn't mean it's right.

You drag things to the Trash Can to Delete them, and the Trash can is
the single-most used example of flaws in the Mac's UI. I'm not going to
copy it (or suggest we copy it) just because some bizzare Mac users are
used to deleting their floppies to eject them.

(Me personally, I would logically expect that dragging a disk (whether
it's hard, floppy, networked, or CD) icon onto a Trash Can would at the
very least delete everything on the disk, and more likely reformat it.)

    Jim Cape
    http://www.jcinteractive.com

    "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them
     pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
        -- Winston Churchill