[Nautilus-list] Re: Installation-time performerance preference

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Hi,

Coincidentally was re-reading Joel Spolsky's book and he has strong
words for wizards that ask questions unrelated to whatever the user is
up to:

 http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$61

Conclusion: we should ask about all the default desktop settings stuff
if we think the user is planning to configure their desktop on first
login - i.e. if desktop configuration is the task they have in
mind. After getting Ximian I'd believe they probably are planning on
that; so the wizard is good. After installing Red Hat, I really doubt
the desktop per se is the main reason they bought the OS, it's just a
means to run apps and tools. So it may well be totally valid for Red
Hat and Ximian (these are just two examples) to differ on whether
there's a doorman wizard - i.e. maybe we both made the right UI
decision for our users.

Of course that leaves the question, what the heck does upstream GNOME
do by default. ;-)

Random other thing Joel argues is that the Netscape/Nautilus/etc. way
of setting up the options dialog is not so good, he suggests a
notebook instead:

 http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$71

But then in the printed copy of his book (this point is not in the
above-linked online edition), he says that we'd have to redesign the
notebook widget in order to nicely support as many tabs as Nautilus
has in its list-on-the-side. He suggests how to do this in the book.

The printed copy of the book also presents a way to keep the Outlook
shortcut bar from sucking. His mockup looks like a pretty good idea.

Havoc