On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 03:57:43PM -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote: > On 05Sep2001 11:46PM (+0100), colin z robertson wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 11:14:42AM -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote: > > > I understand that you were confused in the case you describe. I think > > > in time users will be less confused when instant-apply settings > > > dialogs become the norm (they will assume all settings apply instantly > > > unless some signal says otherwise). > > > > I must confess, while reading through this entire thread I have been > > mystified. And thoroughly so. I am mystified by two things: Firstly, > > by the assumption that instant-apply dialogs will become the norm, and > > secondly, by the belief that they should become the norm. > > Well, things are being incresingly done that way in GNOME. I think if > it's backed by UI team recommendations, it will become the norm. I can see that developers have started doing things this way, but this is the first time I've been aware of the subject being discussed by UI people. > > Apple have recommended instant-apply dialogs for MacOS X, have they > > not? But Apple are not Microsoft, and 10% market share is not 90% > > market share. So why will this make instant-apply the norm? > > Do you mean that instant-apply may confuse users coming from Windows? > Or that Apple's non-dominant market share proves they must be wrong? Sorry, for some reason I was assuming you meant norm in general, rather than norm in GNOME. What I meant was that, without making any value-judgements, it wouldn't become the norm in general anytime soon. > I agree in some cases, like button order, the transition costs for > Windows and existing GNOME users matter more than the benefit of > getting it "right" in some theoretical way. But I don't think that is > the case for instant apply dialogs. Fair enough. I'm not completely sure about that, but you may well be right. > > Furthermore, Apple are not infallible. I can see plenty of potential > > problems with instant-apply dialogs, and not a whole lot of > > advantages. So why do we want them to become the norm? > > What problems do you see with them? Places where they will cause problems: Time and date settings: Mail and files are being timestamped constantly on my system, and cron relies on knowing the the time. Having the time set to an incorrect value is dangerous. Things which require a lot of processing: Even changing GTK+ themes is slow enough that I wouldn't want it to happen every time I look through a list. It's not difficult to imagine situations in graphics and audio programs where this would be highly undesirable. File permissions: Any time at which a file has its permissions set wrong is time at which it's vulnerable. Furthermore, it's not obvious whether permissions have been applied or not. Network settings: If someone were to create a GUI to a procmail-like system, all the time I spent entering a new filter would be time in which mail would be getting filtered to the wrong place. And so on. > I imagined a whole lot before > trying it, but having used them in Nautilus and OS X I think they work > great. Have you tried out any programs that have instant-apply > preference dialogs? Not many. I was rather disorientated when I encountered them in the panel. (I don't use Nautilus.) > The advantage to instant-apply is that it makes it really easy to > tweak multiple settings to taste. It also removes unnecessary > complexity - there is no real reason why it should take an extra > button press in addition to just changing the control to make the > setting take effect. hmm. Personally I see an increase in complexity. As I have shown above, there will be situations in which we can instant-apply and situations in which we can't. Now a user is going to have to work out for every dialog individually whether it will instant-apply or not. I'm fairly fearless about what I do in dialogs because I know that nothing will happen until I press a button. An extra button press is no great price to pay to give the user an impression of safety. Imagine the following situation: A user who frequently changes the image on his desktop or the font in his documents (and sees that they apply instantly) finds himself in a situation where he has to change something like file permissions, for example, which is something that he barely understands but knows that it has important security implications. Let's assume that we've decided that file permissions shouldn't be applied instantly (because of the security implications). Our user may not realise that these settings won't be instantly applied (or perhaps won't be sure) and will be too scared to even touch any of the settings for fear of breaking something. Having a user be cautious about pressing an Apply button is one thing, having them too scared to touch anything is another. > Imagine, for instance, a font selection drop down > in a word processing program's toolbar. It would be crazy if you had > to press an Apply or OK button to get that font selection to take > effect, wouldn't it? The fact that it is in the toolbar rather than in a dialog conveys to me a message that it will instant-apply. The Apply button in a dialog serves two purposes: Applying the changes, and allowing the user to delay applying the changes until they want to. colin _____________________________ ____ rtnl http://rational.cjb.net c z robertson ndirect co uk icq 13294163
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