Re: System Settings Overview Design

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Wed, 2011-10-26 at 12:58 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 5:31 PM, Allan Day <allanpday gmail com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 2011-10-24 at 12:57 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
> > ...
> >>> I've also heard it discussed that we're not going to show some
> >>> hardware panels if they're not needed, such as the graphics tablet
> >>> panel. Can I ask what the plan is there?
> >>
> >> The plan would be to hide hardware based panels where the hardware isn't
> >> readily available. For example, we would hide the Wacom panel if no
> >> Wacom tablets were plugged in and none were configured via Bluetooth.
> >>
> >> We would still show those hidden panels in the search results, as a way
> >> of discovering the settings, if needed.
> > ...
> >
> > Thanks for the info. According to my calculations [1], you might end
> > up with anywhere between 7 and 13 panels in the hardware section,
> > then. Is that right?
> >
> > The reason I ask is that that kind of variation is difficult to have
> > in a fixed grid and still look nice.
> 
> It's the dynamic content in combination with grouping that's the real
> killer for the layout. I've been thinking about this, and I've started
> to wonder whether the groups are really that helpful. I know I don't
> find them very useful, and I'd be surprised if other people do. They
> can also be misleading.

The main goal of the separation is personalisation vs. configuration.

Personal: the only thing you should need to touch
Hardware: making bits of hardware work (most would "just work", such as
display output, or offer alternative entry points, such as adding
bluetooth devices)
System: system related stuff that isn't hardware related

Losing that organisation is a problem. The grouping in OSX is far from
being useful, as there are too many items in that list. But things like
WebOS and iOS have that concept of "important" configuration items which
get split out of their configuration location. Eg. you don't need to go
3 levels deep to get to the airplane switch.

Cheers