Re: Some things I think GNOME should improve

[Les Paul <lespaul23es gmail com>]

2013/4/10 Marco Scannadinari <marco scannadinari co uk>:
>     "Very, very few users are using \"help\" and \"settings\" option"
>
> How do you know this?

I put this as an example:
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/14/do-users-change-their-settings/

They made an experiment, and they concluded that "Less than 5% of the
users we surveyed had changed any settings at all. More than 95% had
kept the settings in the exact configuration that the program
installed in.". And, as I told, I'm pretty sure "help" is even less
used. When was the last time you used the help from an application?
Applications are (or should be) developed to be self-explanatory. And
for those which are too complex for that (Blender, for example),
people just google it. But I'm not talking about removing these
options. I'm talking about moving them to another place, where people
that need them will still have them,


> While I think that the exit button should be clearly visible when an app
> is fullscrened (eg. next to the app icon), I don't think that it is
> inconistent. The Close entry in the appmenu is *always* the last option,
> regardless of how far down it it - this is consistent. Having it always
> the 1st option would look a bit weird IMO because Quit is prioritised
> over About, or Help, for example.

Precisely I'm talking about moving "About", "Help", "Settings" and
other options from there. It isn't inconsistent. But it complicates
things.

> Yeah, I don't think that would work in a usability situation. How would
> the user know to do that? Having a close button next to the icon would
> be more obvious.

How do you know that Alt+F4 closes the window? You just learned it at
some point. I like the idea of having a close button next to the icon
too, but it could look kind of ugly or weird. On the left side of the
icon, you could close a window accidentally trying to click the dash
menu. On the right side, the title bar size depends on the title of
the window.

> Software is not like hardware, or a chair, in that you will not need a
> manual. Each peice of software is different and is not neccesarily
> familiar to each user, so they will probably need a manual or help.
> Even if you removed the Help entry from the menubar, there would still
> be unused real estate occupied by File, Edit, and so on.

Well, it is pretty much as hardware. Software should be developed to
take advantage of what you've learned in another applications. For
example, you learned how drag and drop works with a first application.
Then you noticed that other applications worked the same way. If I
download an application which is supposed to be simple (a music
player, for example) and I notice that I don't know how it works and I
need to look for help, I'll remove it and try with another.

Software has an advantage over hardware. All is abstract, so things
should work easier to the user. Computers are supposed to make easier
our lifes, not to complicate them. If it is more difficult to watch a
movie or to listen to a song over a PC than over a DVD player or a
HiFi system, things are being done wrong. Fortunately, it isn't the
case. Anybody needs to use Banshee or MPlayer to look for help. They
are pretty intuitive.