Re: [Usability] instant-apply issue

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:

> At the moment what happens if the admin changes stuff is that apps
> don't get any notification of it - it's pretty unclear how to
> implement this.

Hmm, okay.  Maybe not such a big deal.

> 
> > Which reminds me, does the porting guide and/or style guide suggest what
> > preferences dialogs should do when GConf indicates that the user doesn't
> > have permission to change a particular preference?
> 
> I believe code should have:
> 
>  if (!gconf_key_is_writable (key))
>    gtk_widget_set_sensitive (key_editor, FALSE);

I guess it was more of a philosophical question than an implementation
one, although I'm glad there's at least one solution that's as easy to
implement as that.  Just disabling a control for no obvious reason (as
far as the user is concerned) doesn't sound like a great usability idea,
though, especially when there's no way they can ever re-enable it
themselves.  We need to communicate to them somehow that it's disabled
because they just shouldn't be messing with it.  

Perhaps you really have to make that decision on a case by case basis,
though-- some things would probably be better hidden altogether, some
disabled, some annotated with descriptive text or tooltips etc.  I'm not
really sure how CDE handles this sort of thing, if at all, I guess I
should try and find out...

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems