Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus Smoke Test --- first draft, feedback Request.

["John Sullivan" <sullivan eazel com>]

Hi David, thanks for speaking up.

Note (which you may have already realized) that we're not talking about
whether something is possible or not, but only about the default behavior
you get from a drag. You can always right-button-drag to be presented with
the choice of move/copy/create-link.

I think you're right that one of the most common cases on the desktop is
links to commonly-launched applications. I think another common case is
documents that the user wants to temporarily store in an "obvious" place for
easy access. In the app case, drag-to-create-link is the handiest default,
whereas in the document case, drag-to-move is the handiest.

But note that "handiest" here is not necessarily best. If we make dragging
to the desktop use a different default than dragging elsewhere, we've
introduced an invisible difference that some users are bound to stumble
over. People will make mistakes because they expect the drag to behave as it
does elsewhere but it will behave differently.

So it's a tradeoff (like everything). The tradeoff is between "handiest
behavior" and "most consistent behavior". Tradeoffs like this where the pros
& cons are along different dimensions are very hard to judge.

John

on 9/5/00 11:24 AM, David Bishop at david bishop dhs org wrote:

> I feel strongly about it :-)  The most common use for dragging stuff to the
> desktop (in my experience) is to have a short cut for commonly used programs,
> ie netscrape, eterm, gnapster, et al.  It is extereemly rare for me to
> actually want to *move* something to my desktop (I think it's obvious why I
> don't want to move eterm or netscape).  In fact, the only thing that I can
> imagine wanting to actually reside on my desktop would be documents, which I
> have a seperate folder for anyways.  Please feel free to flame me if I'm
> missing something obvious :-)
> 
> d.a.bishop
> 
>> on 9/2/00 3:35 PM, Eli Goldberg at eli eazel com wrote:
> 
>>> Hi!
>>> 
>>> I've temporarily posted a first draft of Nautilus Smoke Tests to
>>> <http://www.prometheus-music.com/eazel/smoketests.html>, and would
>>> appreciate any suggested additions or removals before posting (and
>>> using).
>>> 
>>> The goal is to have a set of test cases that a person can execute in
>>> 10-15 minutes or less, which will flag obvious regressions quickly, and
>>> indicate whether a build is suitable for further testing.
> 
>> Hi Eli,
> 
>> Your first draft is a great start to this kind of thing.
> 
>> Nitpick: For many of the tasks, you start with "double-click <whatever>".
>> Note that unless you've changed the default preference, it only takes a
>> single click to activate.
> 
>> D-2: You ask whether dragging a file to the desktop should move it or make a
>> link (you actually used the Mac term "alias", but you meant the Unix term
>> "symbolic link" or just "link"). My preference would be for the desktop to
>> act like any other destination, so a link would not be created by default.
>> I'm not sure what the current behavior is. And somebody could probably talk
>> me out of this if they felt strongly about it.
> 
>> P-2: Whether the icon view draws a hyper-link-like underline under the icon
>> text is a function of the single-click vs. double-click preference.
>> Currently, by default, all three user levels use single-click. So the
>> underline should appear in all three user levels unless you've changed the
>> preference to double-click-to-activate.
> 
>> There are dozens of other tests that you *could* use in such a smoke-test
>> scenario, but nothing pops to mind as being particularly missing or extra
>> from your list. It seems like a good starting point to me.
> 
>> John
> 
> 
> 
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