Re: [Usability] Re: GNOME 2 screenshot - GDict design

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> Oh, and it does not have a preferences dialog :-) It is just plain gtk
> but works fine for my needs. Gdict could do something similar that is
> very simple:
> 
> .--------------------------------------------.
> | Lookup word: [_gnome_________________][go!]|
> |--------------------------------------------|
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |         word definition area               |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |--------------------------------------------|
> |                                  [ Close ] |
> `--------------------------------------------'

You probably want Copy/Cut/Paste functionality. Though technically the
user can right click on the text box in GTK2, I think its nice to
provide it in a menu. Of course, once you've added a menu the [Close]
button goes away. I would reccomend against a toolbar, and if there is
one it should only contain Copy/Cut/Paste ("preferences" and "quit"
really aren't things that should be showing up on toolbars ;-)

 --------------------------------------------
| File  Edit  View  Help                     |
.--------------------------------------------.
| Lookup word: [_gnome_____________][_Lookup]|
|--------------------------------------------|
|     Look in: | All dictionaries           || <- shown from view menu
|--------------------------------------------|
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|         word definition area               |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
 --------------------------------------------

Pressing enter in the lookup word text box should activate the lookup,
and the text box should be focused by default when you open the window.
After entering in a word, the focus should be in the word definition
area so scrolling with the arrow keys works (this is "like a web
browser"). So for an advanced user the interaction pattern would be
"activate gdict, type word, press enter, look at result, CTRL-Q".

File -> Save Definition
     -> ---------------
     -> Quit

Edit -> Cut
     -> Copy
     -> Paste
     -> ---------------
     -> Preferences

View -> Show/Hide dictionary selection (by default it should be hidden)

> Since there is the applet already, the main window really can be just a
> dialog IMHO. So no toolbar or whatnot is needed really. And heck, just
> make it look good by default, we dont need gdict.themes.org :-)
> Wordinspect looks very slick and it is just black and white with some
> boldface here and there. Works great.

If you're going to use custom colours, you need to make sure that they
are not essential to the information for accesibility reasons. If they
are, you need to provide ways of changing them (which gdict currently
does).

I haven't thought about the "Spell Check" feature (bad name, but a
useful feature) much yet... so maybe more on that later. I would think
that it would be fine for it to only be activated if the user enters a
word thats not in the dictionary. Presumably its not a "generic"
spellcheck you expect them to be using from other programs, its spelling
help for words entered into the gdict lookup word bar. Also, it might do
well to display the list of possible matches as hyperlinks. That would
make the "lookup" vs "spell" interaction clearer. I always end up
fiddling there to try and get things to display in the lookup window
after I see the match I want.

wrt to the applet, the lookup button should be on the right side of the
text box. Other than that I think its fine (I don't really think you
need a label too, though a "What is this" dialog would be helpful the
first time its added to the panel).

Also remember to have mneumonics / accelerators / whatever you prefer to
call 'em on buttons so they'll be accessible (and convenient for quick
use too! gdict is the sort of thing that should be really fast with
keynav).

-Seth