Re: [Usability]Galeon 2 usability

[Janne Morén <jan moren lucs lu se>]

On Sun, 2002-10-13 at 19:42, Ricardo Fernández Pascual wrote:
>         - 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.

IMHO, that menu is perhaps the foremost improvement Galeon has compared
to other browsers; the ability to change those prefs on the fly is a
great time saver. From an UI standpoint I see no great difficulties with
having it either. While it is not a 'standard' part of the HIG, there is
nothing preventing additions like this in a task-specific manner, and
for Galeon it really does bring a lot of good functionality to the
application. Moving the 'Preferences' item to 'Edit' on the other hand
is probably a good idea, as that's where people expect it to be. My only
quibble with the menu and the functionality it entails is that I wish
Galeon could remember the settings on a per-site basis, as is now done
with zooming.

>         - 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.

That is probably a reasonable compromise. 

         
>         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?

Gestures should absolutely be retained. A good deal of people use them
(I know I go slightly mad whenevr I must use a browser without them),
and other browsers are starting to use them, so it would be perceived as
a large step backwards to remove them. As for whether they should be
enabled by default: if the gestures work identically to the present
implementation, it is probably good not to have them enabled by default;
users will get confused when odd things start to happen when they do not
expect it to. If, on the other hand, they are implemented with visual
feedback (something like the gesture interface in Mozilla, perhaps),
then it is clear that things are happening and it may be ok to have them
enabled by default.

-- 
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.

Tel.    +46-046 222 8588             Dr. Janne Morén
Home:   +46-046 211 4973             Dept. of Cognitive Science
Fax:    +46-046 222 9758             Kungshuset, Lund
                                     S-222 22 Lund, Sweden