Re: An alternative proposal for instant-apply vs. non-instant-apply

[Kenny Graunke <kenny whitecape org>]

<quote who="Christian Rose">

[snip]

> I agree with 2) in general, with the reservation below:
> 
> Even instant-apply dialogs should have buttons (my suggestion: "Cancel"
> and "Close"). The reason is that we really cannot make any assumptions
> about what window manager is used, what theme is used, the looks of the
> theme or what WM buttons are present. Even if we recommend Sawfish and a
> sane default theme, the user is free to change this into something
> completely different, without any buttons at all, without the buttons we
> assumed were present, or with them in a completely different order, a
> completely different subset of them, with twenty other similar-looking
> buttons, or completely different look of the buttons and them being
> totally unrecognizable in general.

_NO_. We *can* assume that we have a close button. The default settings will
be to use sawfish or another good Window Manager which _WILL_ have a close
button. Most WM themes I have seen have a close button. Why is this?
Examining how my friends and family use their computers, they _always_ use
the close button for windows and everything. A [Close] button in the dialog
simply wastes screen space and clutters the dialogs. I honestly don't care
if people who use TWM or such don't have a close button. They can figure out
some way to deal with it. The vast _majority_ of users have close buttons. I
think many more people have small resolution screens than people who do not
have close buttons. This seems like catering to the 1.2% against the 98.8%.

If we cannot even assume such basic simple functionality, there is _NO WAY_
we will ever be able to succeed at creating a cohesive desktop usable by
the vast majority of the human population. I'm sorry, but at some point
these assumptions become absolutely ridiclous.

> If we use this strategy with no buttons in instant-apply dialogs and
> only relying on WM buttons, a user can easily put himself in the
> position of an unusable desktop just by trying out some themes...

So they can figure out how to close the windows via some other way (a
keybinding, a right click menu on the titlebar, or ...). Or they can change
back to a theme that isn't so ridiculously broken.

> Also I'd argue that only relying on WM buttons is a step down for
> keyboard navigation and accessability in general. It's much easier to
> read a button caption and use tab to navigate to it, than figuring out
> what the shortcut for closing a window is in the WM you happen to be
> using. I'm not an accessibility expert but I think would be a major
> problem.

Not really. It's really easy to hit Ctrl-W or Alt-F4 or some such keybinding
to close a window. It takes _MUCH_ longer to tab to the right control and
then hit space or enter. I must say, as a power user, I often use
keybindings to do such things - tabbing here would just be ridiculously slow.

> We could in fact make this a competition: Figure out the WM keyboard
> shortcut for closing a window, in the window manager you happen to be
> using, in the shortest period of time, and *only using the keyboard*!
> Having the Control Center already open doesn't count.

Ship a good default with a sane keybinding. WM Themes do not and should not
change these keybindings, and anyone who manages to figure out how to change
their Window Manager should be smart enough to figure out that WM's
keybindings and how to access its functionality.

By changing your WM, you should realize that the defaults are going to be
different and your experience -may- not be as good. There shouldn't be a
reason for most users to change their WMs, and those that do probably
already have a preference for that and should know how to use it or figure
it out.

> Christian

--Kenny, apologizing if he seems flaming mad...