Re: Window controls for GNOME 3

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico gnome org>]

On Wed, 2011-02-23 at 16:34 -0500, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote:

> While the close operation is common, it's not frequent, and therefore
> might not require visual representation on-screen all the time. 

Huh, I use the Close button pretty frequently.  I guess I'm still
scarred from when Esc didn't work in every dialog by default.

> Both the application menu in the top bar and the close buttons in the
> overview are well discoverable. Right now, the application menu has
> one Quit option, and the user actually needs to make a decision
> whether they want to fully quit the application with all its windows
> before going for that option. Having both Quit and Close Window (if
> applicable) options in that menu would inform the user of the choice
> they have and allow to use that feature as the central way of closing
> a window or an application.

My main problem with removing the Close button is a combination of
things:

- The Close button is relevant to a single window.  It's nicely *in* the
window right now.  Your proposal would put it far away from the window
(thus losing context), and would make it not immediately visible (you'd
need to open the app menu first - probably discoverable, as you say, but
far from obvious).  My experience with non-technical users (say, my
wife) is that if they don't see something on the screen, they won't know
that that something is actually available.

- The Close button is the "get me out of here" safety exit.  You
wouldn't remove the Back button on a browser just because you can also
access it from the menus.

  Federico