[Nautilus-list] Re: [Usability] user levels, etc.

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

On Monday, November 12, 2001, at 02:04 PM, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net> writes:
> > For instance (and this is hypothetical, so if you disagree with this,
> > that's fine :): most people will want to be able to customize their
> > GTK theme.  Fewer will want to assign custom colors or custom fonts
> > beyond what the theme specifies.  So you have a theme selector, and on
> > the theme selector dialog is a button that says "Customize Colors and
> > Fonts..." which pulls up a secondary dialog to do that.
>
> I'd agree that all apps should do this as their normal UI. The power
> tweak thing is basically an escape valve to be sure we can let vocal
> minorities get what they want without hosing up the normal UI of the
> application.

Your (and Maciej's) point is well taken.  I think it's important to keep 
the escape valve as a last resort; my main point was that its existence 
should not be used as an excuse either to expose a bunch of obscure 
settings, or to hide a bunch of potentially useful settings.  I think 
it's important that developers really go through this thought process on 
every preference and setting in their application and figure out where 
the setting makes the most sense.

And if it doesn't make sense anywhere, it should be left out.  But if 
some single loud complain-y person says that it's the only thing keeping 
them from using the app to its full potential, then I suppose it makes 
sense to expose it in a power-user config area.  However, if one person 
asks for it, they usually have a reason, so it's always worth thinking 
about _why_ the feature is being asked for; it might expose a pattern of 
use that you didn't expect, and other ways in which you might improve 
the app for that purpose.

To be more blunt: I think that it's fine to have an escape valve, but I 
don't want developers to use it as an excuse not to think through the 
design of their preferences.  Customization is an important part of 
GNOME, and we should treat it as such.

> (As far as I understand, user levels were also supposed
> to be such an escape valve; however I think they are overkill, and
> clutter up the normal UI, and complicate things for the app
> developer.)

More to the point, I think they make an arbitrary distinction that 
provides no guidance either to the developer or to the user.

> > And if almost nobody will ever use a preference, then why have it at
> > all?
>
> Basically because the "almost nobody" is really loud and complains a
> lot. ;-)
>
> I'm even in that category from time to time, I use a few settings that
> would definitely be ridiculous to have in the normal UI.

Hmm.  What are they?  Why do you use them?  What tasks do they make 
easier/more pleasant for you?  What is it about your pattern of use that 
makes you so unique that it would be ridiculous for these settings to be 
in the UI?

My point is that before throwing a preference onto the "power-tweaker" 
pile, a developer should think through these questions and understand 
the true motivations behind the use of the pref; there may be other ways 
to accomplish the same end that could improve the UI rather than clutter 
it further.  (BTW, although those were meant as rhetorical questions, 
I'd actually be curious to hear the answers; feel free to reply to me 
offline on that point if you don't want to go off on a tangent thread on 
the list. :)

> Essentially, we need a way to make everyone happy, and power-tweaker
> is a way to do it that doesn't hurt average users. Note that I don't
> say novice users, I think even most of our core technical workstation
> audience would rather not have as many settings as we have now.

Makes sense to me.  But I think it's important to encourage developers 
to try understanding the preference  first, and only use the escape 
valve as a last resort.

Adam