Re: Justification for the button order change - the long version

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

BTW, random aside wrt to apps used with GNOME2 being inconsistent... The
Mozilla UI guy says he will try to get the button order changed for
Mozilla when its running on GNOME2.

cheers,

-Seth

On Wed, 2002-02-27 at 20:37, Gerald Henriksen wrote:
> On 27 Feb 2002 17:49:16 -0800, you wrote:
> 
> >Hey, wait a minute, won't you be using some GTK/GNOME apps, so your
> >desktop will still be inconsistent *wink*. Seriously though, very nice
> 
> Given that those Gnome apps don't follow the new guidelines, no.
> 
> And if they do get updated then I will evaluate alternatives at that
> time and then decide whether to risk continueing with a backwards
> button arrangement or not.
> 
> >So my biggest concern is "external to GNOME" interactions, such as with
> >KDE or Windows users. I think context here is more than sufficient for
> >there not to be a problem though, since we use a different phrasing for
> 
> People moving from a Unix workstation to a PC (or the reverse) usually
> have problems with the different keyboard layouts despite that fact
> that the context change is quite different, so I would argue that it
> will indeed be a problem.
> 
> Another example, using debit cards to pay for purchases has become
> very popular.  In my area most of the debit card swipe machines put a
> picture of the card on the side of the slot where the magnetic strip
> should face.  But 2 store chains used a different machine (different
> shape and colour) that reversed that standard.  Despite knowing that
> those machines were "backwards" and that hence I had to reverse things
> when faced with those machines in those 2 stores I always swiped the
> card the "standard" (ie more common) way and had to redo it when I
> realized my mistake.
> 
> >But I don't think most dialogues will be an issue. Even in the above
> >case people pick up on context pretty darn fast. Most people will
> >probably make this mistake no more than a few times.
> 
> And what gets "accidentally" deleted those few times?  Or accidentally
> overwritten?
> 
> >GNOME 2 settings dialog:
> >http://beauty.stanford.edu/gnome2-mouse.png
> 
> I find this example interesting because to me it demonstrates
> extremely bad UI design.  There is no way to abort any changes you
> have made (ie to return your system back to its same status before you
> starting playing with the settings).
> 
> >That's quite enough about why I believe its not problematic to be
> >different in this area. So why is the GNOME2 button ordering better?
> 
> The fact that it may be better is (unfortunately) not really relevant
> (and maybe if Apple wasn't so quick with their lawyers regarding look
> and feel this wouldn't even be an issue, which also brings up the fact
> that as Gnome2 appears to look extremely similar to the Mac will Apple
> also send its lawyers after Gnome?)
> 
> When you are on a platform (Linux/Solaris) where everyone else does
> things one way you are asking for trouble when you decide to do things
> the opposite way. 
> 
> Though I guess it will make some people happy as it will make a
> Mono/.Net addition to Gnome unworkable given that any .Net apps will
> be following the MS style.
> 
> (as an aside, I find it ironic that just when Richard Stallman calls
> for more consistency between Gnome and KDE it turns out that Gnome is
> going to go and move the two even further apart).
> 
> >The argument basically is that with left-right, top-bottom readers, your
> >eye is left resting on the lower right corner of a window when you are
> >done reading text. That makes the lower right corner the first thing you
> >read when you are done with a block of text. Thus it is the most quickly
> 
> Counterexample.  I briefly went into Gnome2 after reading this and
> ended up (without realizing it) taking a closer look at the UI.  When
> I logged out of Gnome2 up popped a dialog box asking me what I wanted
> to do, and it presented a list of 3 items (all short tiny little words
> with lots of empty space to the right).  Having finished reading the
> text my eyes ended up in the lower left simply because the right half
> of the dialog box was an empty waste land.  In other words, I had to
> go and search out for the OK button.
> 
> 
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