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[GnomeMeeting-devel-list] [Fwd: Re: HIG]

Here is the report of Calum for the druid and for the main GUI.
I agree with him for everything of course (except that I want to keep
the vertical toolbar ;)

Could people with enough coding knowledege like Fabrice, Kenneth,
Migras, ? start to do patches?

Most things are very very easy to patch. Adding mnemonics should not be
a problem either.

When you start working on something, please send a mail to the mailing
list so that people don't work on the same things.

Those things are really easy to fix, piece of cake, so if you want to
help, it is a good opportunity to start patching.

Btw, nobody answered my previous question (Subject: Reminder) yet on the
mailing list :(
--- Begin Message --- 
On Wed, 2002-11-27 at 22:52, Damien Sandras wrote:

> Here are the first screenshots, easy, it is the configuration assistant,
> and the main GUI.

Sorry it's taken so long to get around to this, but here are my comments
on the screenshots...

Configuration assistant
-----------------------

page 1/6:

- Title: "Configuration Assistant", should perhaps be "Configuration
Druid" to match the titlebar and the main text on the page?  (I'm not a
big fan of the term "druid" admittedly, but as long as that's what we're
calling these things...)

- That's quite a solid block of introductory text, you could maybe
insert a blank line before "Once you have completed..." to break it up a
bit.

- "Welcome to... the configuration druid" sounds a little odd, either
"Welcome to GnomeMeeting", or "This is the GnomeMeeting general
configuration druid" would sound better IMHO.

- "Once you have completed... you can always change them later in the
preferences".  If all the things you can set here live in the same
Preferences dialog, might be nicer to say where the preferences dialog
is.  E.g. "Once you have completed these steps, you can always change
them later by selecting Preferences on the Edit menu".

Page 2/6:

- Not sure that italics are the best choice for the description at the
top of each page, italics are generally the hardest fonts to read
on-screen.  Especially on Sun machines that don't support anti-aliasing
:)

- Suggest "Personal Information" rather than "Personal Data".

- "This information will be used when connecting to remote H.323
software".  I have no idea what "H.323 software" is, and I'm sure most
GnomeMeeting users won't either, definitely not the sort of jargon you
should be using in a druid :)

- "Do not register me to ILS": what is ILS?  Is this the "directory of
GnomeMeeting users" mentioned in the page description?  If so, you
should use that description with the checkbox, too.

- 'Comment' field: what is this comment used for?  It's not clear just
by looking at the dialog.

- 'Location': I guess you could maybe be more specific here about what
sort of location you're looking for... country, town, city, "in bed" or
whatever :)

- Text fields: should all have mnemonics, and only the first word should
be capitalised.  I.e. "First name:", "Last name:", and "Email address". 
(Not "E-mail" address, btw, according to the Documentation Styleguide
IIRC).

- Current HIG style for frames is to use bold title and no frame lines,
you should probably use that here.  This applies to all pages, but I
won't mention it again...

Page 3/6:

- Maybe suggest "Network Connection" rather than "Connection Type".
 
- "it is possible to tweak and change"... these two words mean much the
same thing, but "change" is probably much easier to localise :)  Suggest
just saying "it is possible to change".

- "Custom" type... what happens if I select this?  Where do I get the
chance to specify what type of connection I *do* have?  Shouldn't there
be some page or control in the druid that lets me do this?  Also,
"Other" is perhaps a slightly more accurate word than "Custom" for a
network connection.

Page 4/6:

- "You can also choose to use a Quicknet device"... what's that?  How
does a user know they've got one?  How do I choose one if I have it?  If
I don't have to do anything special, there probably isn't any point in
mentioning it, and if I do it should say what I need to do :)

- "Some webcam models have an internal microphone that can be used with
GnomeMeeting".  So what do I need to do to set up one of those?  How is
it different from setting up any other sort of microphone?  Again, if
it's the same, I'm not sure there's any point in mentioning it.  Nobody
reads that part of the screen anyway :)

- Suggest just "Player" and "Recorder" rather than "Audio Player" and
"Audio Recorder".  The "Audio" is kind of redundant given the name of
the frame.

- Click here to test your audio devices:"... couldn't you just lose this
label and write "Test Audio" on the button?


Page 5/6:

- "Test Video" is probably better than "Video Test"; buttons should
generally have verbs on them.

- What is that progress indicator-looking thing for?  :)  (I assume it's
something to do with the video test...)

Page 6/6:

- "Done!"  Exclamation marks usually look a bit unprofessional :) 
"Finished" or "Configuration Complete" might be better...

- "Changes Summary" should perhaps be "Configuration Summary"?  After
all, if this is the first time you've set up GnomeMeeting, you haven't
really 'changed' anything.

Main Window
-----------

main_gui.jpg:

- The spacing between the menu items looks unusually wide, have you
inserted extra spaces here somehow?

- The HIG still recommends against vertical toolbars, but I know we've
talked about that before :)  Do these toolbar buttons have no labels
even if the user switches on labels in the desktop Menus & Toolbars
preferences dialog?  It's kind of bad if that's the case, there should
probably at least be some option somewhere that allows the user to have
labels on the buttons.

- Would be nice if the 'callto:' field had a label (with a mnemonic),
like the location bar in most browsers, although I appreciate that would
eat up some space :/  Failing that, is there a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+L
or something) that will give focus to it?

main_gui2.jpg:

- "Send Message:" should probably be left-aligned with the text field,
not right-aligned.

- Frame around Text Chat probably not really needed, a label would
suffice I think.

main_gui3.jpg:

- Again, the frames on the statistics/audio/video tabs aren't really
needed-- the tab itself frames the controls nicely enough, and provides
a label without having to repeat it here.

- I hope it's possible to change the colours on the statistics graph, to
keep Bill and the accessibility team happy :)

main_gui4.jpg:

- Although they look cool, controls that only have graphics for labels
could be a bit of an accessibility problem too... admittedly you can
provide accessible descriptions for them in the code that a screenreader
can pick up, but that doesn't help you if your eyesight is poor but not
bad enough to need a screenreader :)  You also can't assign mnemonics to
graphical labels.  So I'd suggest adding textual labels to the audio and
video settings controls as well if possible.

Cheeri,
Calum.


-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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