Re: [Usability]Re: [Galeon-devel] Galeon feature implementation

[Roberto Rosselli Del Turco <rosselli ling unipi it>]

Joshua Adam Ginsberg wrote:
> 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. 

It's been already noticed that many of the Settings menu items could 
migrate to View: specifically, Load images, Animate images, Use own 
fonts, Use own colors. It is conceivable that a user with a slow 
connection might be interested in not loading images from a particularly 
"heavy" site, or applying his own fonts when another site has problems 
in displaying them on the page. So keeping these options near at hand 
looks reasonable to me.

All the others should be moved to the Tools menu, and here I agree with 
J.A. Ginsberg: how many users are going to need/use them? They should be 
in Edit/Preferences, if a power user needs them on a daily basis the 
Tools menu could be available through a gconf key, or as a plugin.

> > > > 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... 

You mean drag-and-drop to a specialised downloader program? That would 
be nice, anyway I agree here too, I also find Mozilla's downloader 
obtrusive and not really necessary (for me, of course).

Ciao

--
Roberto Rosselli Del Turco      e-mail:	rosselli cisi unito it
Dipartimento di Scienze			rosselli ling unipi it
del Linguaggio			Then spoke the thunder	DA
Universita' di Torino		Datta: what have we given?  (TSE)

  Hige sceal the heardra,     heorte the cenre,
  mod sceal the mare,       the ure maegen litlath.  (Maldon 312-3)