Re: [Usability] Instant Apply Windows

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 12:17:53AM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > Revert is very useful since then you can mess with settings and don't have to
> > worry about losing your already nice setup.  I do this quite often.  Also say
> > there is a long text property and I by mistake wipe it, and I want it to be
> > like it was before, then Revert can save my day.
> 
> Revert can be useful but is too complicated for people to implement
> correctly (it took ages to get the old control center to work, and
> people are already screwing up gconf usage left and right even without
> the whole ChangeSet complexity). Having done a few instant-apply
> dialogs, I'm really sold on the merits of it being trivial to
> implement.

Well this is another thing about PonG.  Revert comes for free.  It took me
about 10 minutes to implement in PonG actually, making it the easiest feature
of PonG.  This is one of the reasons I think we should use pong.  We could
also perhaps do a right click menu which could do things like "revert to
factory defaults" and such stuff.  All without having to code all that.  PonG
can do it quite simply and correctly.  Perhaps revert could be on a right
click menu as well.

We can furthermore just recommend a revert button but not require it.  Just
like the help button.  I think the help button should not be there if there
is no help to display.

I still think the answer is PonG and I will try to do some more work on it
soon to make it ported to gnome2.  There is some crack in the PonG design and
there are some problems, but I think it's far better then writing preference
dialogs and gconf schemas by hand.

> Also, UI-wise, I think it's better to just be sure you can't break
> anything too badly via the preferences.

Well it's not breaking too badly.  It's things that are neccesssairly
complex, such as a string.  Or even something as a font specification.  Say
you twiddle with the font and find the new font ugly, but don't remember the
old font.  Without revert it is REALLY annoying to change preferences beyond
simple checkboxes and radio buttons.  I'm feeling very uneasy myself without
a revert button.  I imagine users do too.

> After all, revert does no good if you don't notice you screwed up
> until after you close the dialog, so it's only going to save you in a
> few cases.

Of course it's not a silver bullet, but it does save you in quite a few
cases.  Especially where string input is concerned and you mess up the
strings.  Imagine the property box for editting ditems.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely
   once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
                       -- Abba Eban, 1970