On Mon, 2002-11-04 at 18:26, Philip Langdale wrote: > >>b) Equivalent functionality to the Settings menu. I am told that an > >>actual Settings menu isn't The Right Thing(tm) but as long as the > >>items under it end up in the menu structure at the end of the day, I'm > >>happy. In case you don't have galeon1 or are disinclined to look at it, > >>the settings menu provides quick access to filtering configuration and > >>toggles for such things are turning java and javascript on and off and > >>forcing the usage of user defined colors and fonts. > > > > > > I think that the best place for those items is the Settings menu, > > because it is the most obvious choice... but I agree with you. > > Well, I personally have no problems with a Settings menu, but as I said, > if the usabiity folks can suggest more optimal locations for these > items, I'll be happy to go with them. I would sincerely question how often a user wishes to change many of the items in the Settings menu on a consistent basis. Better yet, on a site-by-site basis. Are the majority of users going to disable Java or JavaScript for a single site, or are they going to disable them in general? Are they going to change the behavior of animated images for a single site, or are they going to have a setting for in general? The same for popups, proxies, loading images, etc. My guess is that the majority of users would not consistently change the settings, and thus access directly to them through a Settings menu are not necessary to satisfy the small minority who I would expect do. Further evidence that probably this appeals only to a minority is its lack in MSIE, Konq, and Mozilla (I don't have Opera; I can't check). So I would suggest that these menu items are not necessary to have such easy access to and the the Preferences menu where the remainder of preferences reside can be moved to the Edit menu in accordance with the HIG. > >>d) External Downloader support. Well, we had this until the very last > >>minute when marco commented it out... I'm not sure there's much of a UI > >>issue here. It's a matter of some prefs (dirty word, I know) to indicate > >>whether an external downloader is being used and what it is. > > > > > > I don't use the external downloader and our internal downloader works > > very well for small files. So, I don't care. > > My attitude is much as Elivind has already articulated. Comprehensive > download features are rightly beyond the scope of galeon, so the ability > to easily hand off download tasks to a specialised program is a big plus > for me. Again, I'd consider this a minority feature... For 90% of users, I would assert that the built in downloader is fine, because probably 90% of users just want their browser to download what they tell it and don't care about when or how... And again, no other browser seems to have this functionality built in... If you want this feature to remain, I'd suggest the drag-and-drop as recommended by others (I think Havoc)... and if you really want to continue to support this, leave it as something in GConf that power users can switch if they *really* want to... > > Nobody has convinced me still why can't we have two prefs dialogs. Gconf > > makes it very easy, and an advanced dialog would allow us to make a very > > easy to use simple dialog. > > > > I know that the word "Advanced" is tabu these days. > > I completely agree here, but I am reliably informed that things won't go > so well if we just do what I want. :-) So, I ask for the expert opinion > on how this can be reconciled. I'm torn over this. I think most non-expert users have grown accustomed to seeing the word "Advanced" in a preferences dialog and avoiding it like the plague... I think power users have grown accustomed to finding the nit-picky settings they want in an Advanced section... it's against HIG, but I can't say I agree with why... possibly because it just invites feature abuse... people will resort to "anything which might confuse a normal user but that 2% of users might want to play with should get stuck in the Advanced section"... but I guess my compromise would be something along the lines of since a browser is such a primary tool on the desktop and people are rather particular about their browser, have Advanced features if it makes your preferences dialog prettier and simpler, however use extreme discipline in avoiding feature bloat... only feature settings that affect a significant portion of users (say, 20% or more) but that a new user might be confused by and probably wouldn't care about... -jag -- --------------------------------------------------------- Joshua Adam Ginsberg Cellphone: 713.478.1769 Rice University '02 Email: joshg myrealbox com St. Mark's School of Texas '98 -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin ---------------------------------------------------------
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