Maciej, There are some fair points in what you say. I'm not going to respond to everything individually, just a few points. I don't agree with everything you say, but I don't think that our disagreements amount to much more than differing tastes. On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 02:35:32PM -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote: > On 06Sep2001 01:18PM (+0100), colin z robertson wrote: > > 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. > > I agree, although I think it's useful to think about the setting > vs. preference distinction here. Well, in general, I'm _very_ dubious about this distinction. > > > 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.) > > > > Did you get used to it over time? Well, my panel setup is pretty stable, so I haven't used it much. But I've just been playing around with it, and while I know it's the panel -- I can't do anything bad with it -- I can't get rid of that slight fear and discomfort. Maybe it's just that I have the instincts of someone who's used Windows for many years and GNOME for a few, but it just goes against everything I expect from everyday controls. (Incidentally, I did have to rearrange my icons after switching from normal to large and back again, so my fear wasn't entirely unfounded. Lossy transforms are yet another potential problem.) > > 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. > > For most preferences, you shouldn't have any fear anyway, because > there should be no "wrong" values. Are you ever scared to use a light > switch, or twist a knob on your radio? On an unfamiliar device, sometimes. Other people's mobile phones scare me. There may be no wrong values, but I don't necessarily know that yet. > > 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. > > For most users, file permissions are largely unimportant because their > system is single-user or has relatively few users who are all known to > him. I think it's foolish to think most users will ever think file > permissions are such a big deal. That's not the point. Our hypothetical user barely understands file permissions. He doesn't know how important or unimportant they are. > > 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. > > I don't think most users are gripped with fear about file permissions. I'm not sure. Users can get gripped with fear about all sorts of strange things. > But in more realistic cases of this (say, setting your IP address), I > think the presence of an "Apply" or "Save" button will make it very > clear the settings need to be saved to take effect. I'm not sure about this either. If this were the case, the fact that the panel's dialogs only have a Close button should've alerted me to the fact that the dialogs would instantly apply, but they only did so when I went to click the Apply or OK button and found it wasn't there. > To me, instant apply settings derive from the same principle as > WYSIWYG word processing. Why should I have to pick "Print Preview" to > see what my document will really look like? Why should I have to hit > "Apply" to see what my font change will _really_ do? hm. I'm a LaTeX user. Point taken nonetheless. > Anyway, this argument is a bit of a waste of time. GNOME is generally > going with the instant-apply approach, so we should figure out how to > make that work best for the user. In the words of Kosh, "The avalanche > has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." I think the phrase you're looking for is fait accompli. :) On balance, I think I'm still against instant-apply in general. But I can see that it has its supporters and some arguments in its favour. But it raises a lot of questions, and it needs to done properly. Adam has done a good job of thinking about this, and I'll deal with some of the questions when I reply to his proposal. colin _____________________________ ____ rtnl http://rational.cjb.net c z robertson ndirect co uk icq 13294163
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