[Usability]Galeon 2 usability

[Ricardo Fernández Pascual <ric users sourceforge net>]

Hi,

    I'm witting this mail on behalf of the galeon team. There has been a
lot of discussions in the galeon-devel mailing list about several items
related with usability. We want to know the opinion of the members of
this list in order to take good decisions about the future of galeon.

        - menu layout: Many old galeon users like the old menu layout of
        galeon 1 more than the new layout of galeon 2, which is more
        simple and tries to follow the HIG. Many options are missing in
        the new menu.
        
        Specifically, there is no "Settings" menu in galeon 2 (the
        "Preferences" menu item is in the "Edit" menu). In galeon 1
        there was a "Settings" menu with that menu item and some often
        toggled options (like javascript, java...). It made those
        options more easily reachable. The question is if they should be
        so easily available or it is better to keep the UI simpler.
        
        Galeon already has configurable toolbars. I has been proposed to
        allow several different menu layouts.
        
        - preferences: there are many missing preferences in galeon 1
        when compared with galeon 2. This annoys many users. It has been
        suggested to provide two different "Preferences" dialog, one
        simple default and another for "Advanced" users.
        
        Examples of removed prefs are: mouse button bindings, mouse
        wheel settings, autocompletion behaviour, default stylesheet...
        
        - gestures: galeon 1 supported gestures. This added some
        preferences to the already crowded dialog. Gestures were not
        enabled by default because they conflicted with the standard
        context menu. Should gestures be kept in galeon 2? Should they
        be enabled  by default?
        
        - mime handling: galeon has a small separate mime database which
        is easier to edit and works well for galeon.
        It remembers previous user choices and fallbacks to gnome-vfs
        when possible.
        Also, some people think that users should be able to choose the
        helper used by galeon without affecting the gnome-vfs mime
        database.
        
        The disadvantages of using only gnome-vfs would be:
        
        1) Global effect of changing a default helper
        2) Fact that you have to go out the gnome-vfs control panel to
        change them.
        3) Useless defaults in the database.
        
        This would be implemented using a dialog with "Save", "Cancel"
        and "Open". "Open" will use gnome vfs to choose the helper

    One possible solution for this is to allow having two separate UIs
that the user could choose toggling a gconf key or command line switch.
We would like to avoid this solution for maintainability reasons, but so
far it seems the only way to avoid a fork.

    Thank you for your help.

Greetings,
Ricardo

-- 
Ricardo Fernández Pascual
ric users sourceforge net
Murcia. España.