Re: [gnome-love] Re: [Nautilus-list] GNOME user environmentbrainstorming

[Sander Vesik <Sander Vesik Sun COM>]

On Mon, 28 May 2001, Christian Rose wrote:

> Sander Vesik wrote:
> > > How about some panel app or menu that displays it's self as a "What does
> > > this do" button (shortend of course) and when the user clicks on it the
> > > cursor turns to a question mark and then they can point at any feature
> > > in GNOME and have a popup help explaining how to turn on/off and what it
> > > does.
> > 
> > How about a big red button with the text "MULTIPLE WORSPACES" that appears
> > in the place of desk guide by defualt and gets converted to desk guide
> > once user has clicked on it (even once)?
> > 
> > There is presently no indications in the standard installation that gnome
> > supports them - and that IMHO just plain wrong.
> 
> IMHO, big red buttons is a no-no. Many users are simply not used
> to/interested in multiple workspaces, and we should not need to warn
> them about a feature(!). Better let it default to off.
> 

Well, the big red button was suggested (by me) as a "kind of" alternative
to having multiple workspaces on by default.

> I think the setting of workspace defaults should be done by the
> packager. So if Sun are worried that their previous CDE customers won't
> feel at home without multiple workspaces, Sun can ship GNOME with
> multiple workspaces configured by default for their users.
> 

I *DO* *NOT* speak for Sun. I absolutely don't speak for anybody but me on
any usability issue - I just refuse to have a special yahoo.com (or
similar) account to talk about these. Rest asures, whenever I'm talking
for myself but som other entity (whichever that is), the text will be
labeled as such.

Yes, I did mention CDE (which, welcome to the real world, isn't Sun
specific anyways), but you could replace it with any other legacy/alternative 
desktop (like say XFCE) that has easily available multiple desktops in
it's place. Or, if you absolutely want, you can continue to ignore the
point.

> As for what default setup comes from GNOME sources and is thus
> "recommended", I think it should only be a single workspace. As people
> have already mentioned, people not used to the concept of multiple
> workspaces can get horribly confused by them.
> In the end I think it would be nice if the default was chosen according
> to userlevel ("experienced" users are more likely to have encountered
> the concept of multiple workspaces before).
> 

People who find the idea of mutiple desktops confusing have zero, nada,
zilch chance of surviving for more than 10 seconds in the GNOME
environment with all it's quirky behaviours, gnome specific slang and
general confusion anyways.

> 
> Christian
> 

	Sander

One day a tortoise will learn to fly
	-- Terry Pratchett, 'Small Gods'