Re: [Nautilus-list] Results of MIT usability testing

[John Sullivan <sullivan eazel com>]

<bunch of history deleted>

on 3/4/01 6:14 PM, tom georgoulias at tmgeorgo io com wrote:
> Actually, that was my (Tom) suggestion.  I wasn't as clear on it as I
> should've been, but the only MIME types I was really concerned with were
> the ones for text files, HTML, and MP3s (maybe image files as well).
> The rest of the stuff can be dealt with later or by the usual GNOME
> defaults.  However, I totally agree with you when you say it would be a
> terrifying way to start up if one had to pick an app for *every* MIME
> type, especially on your first GNOME experience!  Besides, this was just
> a suggestion of a way to set up the user with a familiar desktop
> environment that Miles mentioned.  There are many drawbacks to using
> what I described.
> 
> However, the MIT usability test results that first time users tried
> editing text files through the text viewer and didn't find using an
> external editor immediately obvious is something that should be
> addressed.  The same thing happened to me when I first used nautilus.
> Maybe the easiest way to get a workaround in for 1.0 is to have a
> message displayed in the side panel just under the file properties that
> says "You are in text view mode.  To make changes to this file use one
> of the following launchers" or something like that.  That would make it
> more obivous that whatever you do to the file in that mode isn't going
> to have any effect unless you open it with a different application.
> 
> --Tom

I just remembered that there was a nasty problem with the old Text viewer
where it would let you delete/change text, though there was no way to save
these changes. I think this bug may have been present in the version of
Nautilus used for the user tests, though I'm not sure.

The current Text viewer built into Nautilus does not allow the user to
change the displayed text (as well it shouldn't, since it is just a viewer
and not an editor). Hopefully this will make a huge difference in user
confusion.

I understand that some users will still be surprised/confused by the viewers
that don't allow editing, like the text viewer and image viewer. Your idea
of adding a little prompt somewhere, perhaps in the sidebar, might help make
this clear. It's too late to make even apparently small changes like that
one for 1.0 though. Not that it's a bad idea, just that we're already later
than we'd like to be for shipping 1.0, and we need to put off all
non-critical changes until after this release.

John