Re: [Usability]GNOME 2 HIG review

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> * Colin Z. Robertson has gotten his name all in lower case. It must be in upper case as the rest of the copyright holders.

Don't ask me why, this is how Colin likes to have his name presented...

> 
> Chapter 1. Introduction
> -----------------------
> 
> * In the first paragraph the target audience is defined as "interface designers, graphics artists and software developers". The first line of the second paragraph says "[t]hese guidelines are meant to help you [WRITE] applications...".
> 
> I see that this can be inconsistent because only software developers write applications. The rest of the target audience will not identify their work as application writing.
> 
> I propose to change "write" to "design", "design the iterface" or something in a similar vein.

I changed this to "create".

> 
> Chapter 2. Usability Principles
> -------------------------------
> 
> "Design for People"
> 
> * In this section there is a list that I think that must be changed to keep an English sentence structure, i.e:
> 
> Change this:
> 
> ?   * who your users are
> ?   * what you want to enable them to do
> 
> to:
> 
>     * who your users are, and
>     * what you want to enable them to do.

Changed.

> * I find the repetition of "designing an application" in the second paragraph a bit confusing; maybe it can benefit from a rewording.

I don't agree. Repetition is being used here for emphasis, and I'm not
sure its particularly confusing.
> 
> * I can work on the bibliographic references if you want. It just would need more work than this notes. ;)

That would be helpful, you should probably coordinate with Calum on
this.

> 
> Chaper 6. Toolbars
> ------------------
> 
> * Figure 6.4 depicts a toolbar with a close button. According to conversations on the usability mailing list ("GNOME-SEARCH-TOOL" thread, August 2002) that example image must be changed.

Yes... Our existing screenshots are mostly from GNOME applications. The
advantage is it spared us having to create a bunch of mockups (saving
time). The downside is that practically every thing we draw a sample
shot from has *some* HIG/usability error in the shot (which is
embarrasing :-) We're tending to move more toward glade mockups now, so
eventually we will have more flexibility.

As for why that button is there... Its from GEdit which is an MDI
application using tabs. It should probably embed the close button in the
actual tab interface though, like Galeon does. This makes the mapping of
close more obvious, and removes a potentially hazardous toolbar item.

Thanks for the comments, keep them coming ;-)

-Seth