Re: [Usability] New Nautilus File Exists Dialog

["Liam R. E. Quin" <liam holoweb net>]

On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 09:23, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Liam R. E. Quin wrote:
> 
> > This dialogue box should probably not exist... if I drop an icon on top
> > of another, replace the lower one, and put it in the Trash.  If I want
> 
> Excuse me? That would be a guaranteed data-loss helpdesk nightmare if I
> ever saw one. 

Sorry for a late reply, I've been travelling.

I also suggested that there should be a report at the end,
where necessary, with an Undo button.  Then people could either
undo all transactions, or recover individual files from the trash.
The idea is to make the common case easiest, and to avoid asking
potentially difficult questions, but without getting people into
trouble.

Interacting through dialogue boxes is much more painful than
interacting through tools designed for the purpose.

If nautilus brought up two virtual folders, before and after,
and I had a "compare folders" tool, that might be an improvement.

Maybe like Mandrake Update's tool (actually in gurpmi I think) to
compare two configuration files if a package update had a difference
and let you use old / use new / leave both in place.

Old Bank Machines had a lot more error dialogues than newer ones,
and part of that is better design, trying to remove possible error
situations by design instead of correcting them afterwards.
E.g. some bank machines don't let me ask to withdraw money from an
account that I don't actually have, and offer a menu of amounts
(with "other" as a choice) rather than making me enter the amount
each time.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
Author, Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley August 2000
Co-author: The XML Specification Guide, Wiley 1999; Mastering XML, Sybex 2001