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

["Galton, Simon" <galtons aecl ca>]

I've been reading this thread with interest, and I have a quick suggestion.

If a user double-clicks on a document or editable item, they expect an
application
to appear and for the document to be loaded.  They are not expecting a menu,
or anything
else for that matter.

Might I suggest that an enhancement be made to the menu which appears with a
right-
mouse-click on the item, which Windows folks sometimes call the "context
menu".  I'd 
like to see a list of open with... options:
 ____________
|other       |
|menu        |
|choices     |
==============
|Open with...|
|  gedit     |
|  gnotepad  |
|  otheredit |
|____________|

This cuts down on complex clicking and poking.  As I'm sure you all know,
under 
Windows Explorer you can hold down shift and right-mouse-click an icon and
get an 
Open With item in the menu.  Choosing Open With brings up a dialog box which
slowly 
populates with all registered executables.  Most of these can't even
intelligently 
deal with the item you're trying to open - ie: you're opening an .mp3 and
one of
the options is Notepad.  You have to scroll up and down the list, find the
item,
select it then hit Okay.  That's one keypress and two clicks and a big
scrollbar
drag.  The Open with... menu options get the job done in one or two clicks.

Just my 2 cents.

Simon 

-----Original Message-----
From: tom georgoulias [mailto:tmgeorgo io com]
Sent: Sunday March 04, 2001 9:12 PM
To: galtons aecl ca
Cc: Christopher D. Beland; Susan B. Jones; nautilus-list eazel com;
arlo eazel com; eli eazel com; Andy Hertzfeld; aui MIT EDU;
kcahill MIT EDU
Subject: Re: [Nautilus-list] Results of MIT usability testing


Christopher Beland wrote:
> >>>>> My personal recommendation would be that a double-click launches an
> >>>>> external editor, or optionally a dialog that asks the user what app
> >>>>> they want to use to edit or view the file.

tom georgoulias wrote:
> >>> Actually, I just found out you *can* do this by changing the default
> >>> application in the file handler.  I'm a little ashamed for writing my
> >>> statement above before fully investigating, but I don't know how long
> >>> this feature has been active so it may have just been added or
> >>> implemented.

Miles Lane wrote:
> >> Well, a lot of usability for the majority of users
> >> has to do with defaults that give them familiar
> >> GUI behavior.  I think all such options should default
> >> to Windoze-like behavior and then geeks can tweak those
> >> settings to their heart's content.

tom georgoulias wrote:
> > True.  An easy way to do this is to have the first time start up wizard
> > get the current control center configs and confirm the apps the user has
> > chosen to deal with MIME types.  If they want the "no default, present
> > options in a list" option they could also choose that.  In either case,
> > the wizard could then tell them where they can change this config at a
> > later time and proceed on it's merry way.
> >
> > If this is the first time they are using GNOME they could be presented
> > with a list of choices for each MIME type sort of like this:
> >
> > "What would you like to use for text editing?
> > 1. Emacs 2. gEdit 3. vi 4. abiword.  5. XXXX
> >
> > "What would you like to use for MP3s?
> > 1. mpg123 2. freeamp 3. XMMS 4. XXXX
> >
> > and so on.  A few short statements about each of the different choices
> > would give insight on which might be the best option for the user (gEdit
> > -simple text editor, freeamp --full featured mp3 player, etc.) and could
> > even be narrowed down (or decided for them) by their choice of nautilus
> > user level: beginner, intermediate, advanced.  This would solve a lot of
> > problems right from the start.

John Sullivan wrote:
> This seems like a terrifying way to introduce a user to GNOME, at least as
> stated here. There are potentially hundreds of MIME types, each one of
which
> could have a different default handler. The thought of a first-time user
> answering questions about how they want to deal with each type before they
> can even see Nautilus is enough to cause nightmares.

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


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