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

[Ben Ford <bford talontech com>]

Steven Hatfield wrote:

> > I can't help but gripe about this misuse of the word "intuition". It's true
> > that Nautilus does not behave exactly like Windows or Mac in that by
> > default you view documents in Nautilus and have to take a different step to
> > open them in external applications. But this has nothing to do with
> > "intuition", unless you cheapen "intuition" to mean simply "expectation
> > based on using somewhat similar programs in the past". If you follow that
> > route, then you start calling everything new "non-intuitive" because it's
> > not exactly like its predecessors.
> >
> > > 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.
>
> >
> > I agree that this is one of GTK/Gnome/Linux/Unix's big problems with poor
> > feedback. I hope we can find some way to address it in the future.
>
> At least someone agrees with me :-)
>
> Have a great day, and Happy New Year!
> -Steven Hatfield
>

Try this URL:   http://www.lysator.liu.se/~astrand/projects/xalf/
It is a trivial matter to change the pointer.

-b