Re: Control Center must-fix draft

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

More gratuitous opinions:

On 05Sep2001 07:36PM (-0700), Seth Nickell wrote:
> ========Interaction / Organization Issues=========
> 
> 1) The confusing "[Try] [Revert] [OK] [Cancel]" system has been replaced
> by [OK] [Cancel]. The
> problem is that the user's ability to preview changes has been lost,
> reverting us to Windows 3.1
> preferences dialogue functionality. To get a taste for what they are
> changing users must make
> all their changes and then exit the dialogue by pressing [OK].
> 
> After some discussion, and a re-evaluation of the existing dialogue
> proposal, we propose the
> control center use "[Help]         [Undo] [Done]". Help is optional, but
> of course desirable.
> Undo only undoes the last change. Done closes the dialogue. All
> preferences should take effect
> as soon as the user changes them.

I suggest [Close] instead of [Done]. I also suggest removing [Undo], I
don't think one level of undo adds much. (Of course, if it's left in,
the button should be dimmed when there is no active Undo item to limit
the chance that the user will think the undo chain is unlimited). And
finally, [Help] should probably go to the help for that particular
capplet and should only be present when the capplet actually has help
(I hate pressing help buttons only to find a generic "no help on this"
page).

> 
> 2) Sawfish preferences need to be completely reworked. Most of the
> options should go away, or
> be deprecated into an "advanced user" system (even that is of dubious
> value for many of Sawfishs'
> options). The user should not be exposed to the notion of the "Window
> Manager". That means that
> most of the remaining sawfish preferences will need to find better homes
> than "Window Manager".
> What is "window cycling", "shade hover", "miscellaneous", "matched
> windows", etc ?!?

Amen.


> 3) Default applications needs to use the same "backend" as the File
> Types & Programs capplet.
> It should be a beginner's window into the same settings as file types &
> programs sets. That also
> means that File Types & Programs needs to be extented to include URL
> handlers.

This is, one some level, a gnome-vfs API issue. The current plan is
not to fix that issue for 2.0. So this might have to be a 2.2 item.

> 4) We assume the Sawfish appearance capplet will go away in favour of
> metathemer.

Will metathemer be ready for 2.0?


> 5-7)

Agree on all of these

> 
> 8) The HTML Viewer should not be in the main section. In fact, it should
> use GTK+ font preferences
> by default, and probably shouldn't exist at all. How can the user know
> what changing "HTML viewer"
> will change? It probably won't change their web browser, but it'll
> change applications like 
> Evolution. That's an archane technical detail, don't expose it. Its ok
> if we find a more
> general way to express this that controls other similar text (not just
> GtkHTML text) and have
> a central place to set fonts.

In web browsers it's often useful to set the font to something other
than the system default. I typically use a larger font. Perhaps there
could be a "web browser font" setting with other font preferences, and
maybe we could even make some attempt to get Mozilla / Netscape 6 to
obey it. I agree it's not worth a top-level control panel though.
 
> =========Icon Issues========
> 

Agree on all of these.

Regards,

Maciej