Re: [Setup-tool-hackers] Re: Admin tool UI designs

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel helixcode com>]

> All these screenshots show pretty much the same layout we have been using
> for the moment. All of the frontends need a complete redesign, based on
> new UI policies, not just a couple of widget moving-around and some spit
> and shine. You should take a look at the users administrator and tell us
> what you think about that one, which has gone under a different
> perspective for the UI.

The issue Arturo is that those small changes make a big difference for
usability and the overall pleasure of the system.  

There is no rationale in the screenshots, that is what Taylor wanted
to conference about with you guys, but things like having a single
entry line instead of 4 entries for the IP address make a big
difference.  This is what the Mac does and it is a lot better than the
Windows-like setups.

Taylor has taken a course on user interface design, and these changes
will help improve our offering.  Sadly, all of us programmers are good
at hacking, but we are very bad at doing the last bit of polish.

Sure, we can do more than what Taylor has done, but lets begin step by
step.  

Something that we will be doing as part of the work at Helix is not
only producing code, but we are integrating the QA team and the user
interface teams very strongly with the current efforts since the
beginning, so that user interface is not an after-thought, but a
complete part of the process.

I am requesting that you guys --the helix setup tools team-- take the
input of Taylor and Anna seriously and implement those user interface
improvements.  From my perspective a bad user interface should count
as a bug, and we need to fix the bug.

> Should we hide UNIX (UNIX concepts) from the end-user?
> 
>  It would be nice to have UNIX-aware users, where gurus and end-users can
>  communicate in the same language. The druids would explain the concepts.
>  GNOME would be an environment where you can learn new, more sophisticated
>  stuff. Hiding UNIX could be difficult, and would make it equally difficult
>  to the users to use any other configuration tools. Transition from end-user
>  to expert is easier this way. Druids and help files could refer the user to
>  the LDP howtos, for the maximum level of explanation.

Our objective Arturo, as I had said before, is not to "teach" people
Unix.  Helix GNOME is not targeted to teaching people, but targeted
towards competing with MacOS X and Windows 2000.  Teaching Unix
concepts is completely out of the scope here.

> gnome-druids should be all over the place.
> 
>  The use of the druid is a learning experience, with easy to understand
>  texts at every screen.

I disagree strongly.  I recently used IRIX 6.5 Wizard-based setup
tools, and they plain suck.  It is impossible to do any task without
flipping trough piles of pages of stupid texts and stupid boxes.  

I like the Macintosh approach a lot more than druids all over the
place.

Before implementing druids, you guys are going to have to present a
concrete action plan for it, and post a detailed description of what
you want to do.  Otherwise we will end up with a big
miss-communication and a piece of code that we do not want to support
in the long term scenario.

Best wishes,
Miguel.

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