[Setup-tool-hackers] Re: networking.glade

[Anna Dirks <anna helixcode com>]

Hello Jacob, 

Wow. First of all, I want to say that you've done a great job with the
networking stuff 
thus far. There are a few places where I think the flow could be
improved, but the 
overall layout is impeccable. Kudos. 

Comments: 

1. The networking settings dialog is great. The only page which I find
non-intuitive
is the DNS page. Specifically, it isn't clear to me how the user should
enter text into the
large text boxes ("DNS Servers" and "Search domains") --if I want to
enter two domains into the list of search domains, would I delineate
them with commas? line breaks?

In the rest of the HST, when the user is asked to add items to a list,
we use a format such as 
on your Hosts tab...with "add" or "insert" buttons and small text
entries. I'd like to see this format preserved where possible, to reduce
the HST's learning curve. 

I understand that adding small entries, "add" and "remove" buttons might
clutter this page-- if we decided that this was the right thing to do,
then there are two possible ways to avoid 
this. First, the DNS Servers and Search domains text boxes are currently
quite a bit wider than 
the information entered into them is likely to be. These boxes could
shrink a bit, and the buttons/
small entry could fit in the frame, along the right side. Or, this page
could be split into two
pages (one for dns servers, one for domains to search) as it was in the
Name Resolution dialog.  

(Incidentally, I looked into how macs handle this stuff, and found that
they use the big text
entries--so there is some precedent for doing it that way. However the
mac's tcp/ip
dialog is horribly organized. It looks like alphabet soup.We can do
better.) 

Anyway, I could be gravely misunderstanding something here, so please
enlighten me 
if that's the case. 

2. The connection dialog worries me a little; I'd like to see us come up
with a better 
flow for these pages. That is, each of these pages has a long, ungrouped
list of fields to 
fill in....I fear that users will find this a bit daunting. (I know that
you guys probably have no 
problem at all with any of these fields, but we *cannot* consider you to
be average users.) 

Consider the Internet Protocol page, where there are six fields: IP
Address, Network mask, Broadcast address, Network address, Gateway
address, and Point-to-point address. 

I don't know enough about how these fields are related to suggest a
grouping for them, but
I can suggest some strategies for finding a good grouping. First, where
does the user go 
to get this information? (Probably she just asks her sys admin, right?
:) However if some 
of this information is stored in a different place than the rest of this
information, then separating
the fields by info-source could help. 

Or, are there fields here that are only relevant to users who are part
of a network? If so, those
fields can be grouped together in a network frame. More generally,
fields which only a 
subset of users need fill out can/should be explicitly marked as such.
(What we want to
avoid here is having users be confused when they can't find some info
which isn't actually
necessary for them.) Does that make sense? 

On a different note, I suggest redesigning the General page. My gripe
with it is that (assuming
we're going to go with the left-aligned no-colon thing) the labels
(Name, Description, etc) and their
associated entries/option menus are separated by quite a lot of
space..and making the 
entries expand to fill this space would result in awfully long enries .
The option menus
are already too long. Ideally, the space which you give a user to enter
something into should
be roughly the length of what she will enter. 

overly long fields = wasted space = space we could use to help explain
what we are asking for, or where to find it.  

I will make a mockup (today, knock on wood) of another  way to do the
General page to illustrate my points. 

Okay. Again, the possibility exists that I'm being a space-cadet. Please
let me know 
if that's the case.

cordially, 
Anna


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