Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus user testing at MIT

[James Morton <gengis hawaii rr com>]

This is somewhat off-topic, but since noone else has mentioned it, I thought I would.

A program exists for GNOME called 'Xalf' that provides numerous forms of
visual-feedback when launching applications.  Many distributions, such
as Mandrake, come with it pre-installed.  Xalf is fully configurable.
You can have it launch a splash screen, change the cursor to an
hourglass, create a window in the taskbar, or use a weird animated star
thingee.  It is just a wrapper.  You launch the applications through
Xalf. (xalf -i netscape).  This is the approach KDE has taken.  If you
use the run dialog, Kicker, or double-click an icon on the desktop, it
simply launches the application through some wrapper.

All that needs to be done with GNOME to provide visual feedback is to
include Xalf as a GNOME app (Preferrably turned off by default, as I
find the visual feedback somewhat annoying.  I like watching my
CPUmonitor applet:)

- James



> >
> > > The other thing, and this isn't really nautilus, I think,but Gnome is
> > > that
> > > when you try to launch something there is no indication that it is
> > > launching so we see people launching two, three, 16 instances of an
> > > application.  They are looking for the hour glass or something.
> 
> I (as a former Win32 user/developer and a recently converted Linux user) have 
> to agree with Susan here -- without visual feedback, using Gnome/Nautilus is 
> annoying. KDE2 gives me visual feedback in that the task bar shows an entry 
> for the application that is starting with a spinning disc next to it, and 
> then once the application is fully realized, the spinning disc turns into the 
> application icon. This is a great first step (for KDE2 users, at least), but 
> one thing that Linux (ALL window managers/desktop environments) is missing is 
> that hourglass pointer. Why is it that we can't change the way our pointer 
> looks? We can change every pixel on the screen, except for the one that our 
> eyes follow all day?! If you could find a way to change this arrow (and 
> provide the visual feedback that is necessary for users to know that 
> something is happening), you would go a long way toward strengthening Linux 
> in the eyes of the user base.