Re: [Usability]Galeon 2 usability

[MArk Finlay <sisob eircom net>]

I'm not an "official member" of the gnome usibility team but I'm running
galeon2 atm and I ran galeon 1 for a long time and I am fairly familiar
with gnome design and usibility philosophies.

>         - 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.
>         

My view on this is that I like the features provided by the Galeon 1
menus but I also like the HIG style galeon2 menus and I see no reason
why a compromise can't be made. eg. Leave Preferences where it is and
add the option to turn on/off pics, javascript, popups and cookies to
the tools menu or another menu.

I was actally planning on posting to the galeon list about this issue. I
remember when i first found galeon it's two selling points were speed
and turning on and off javascript and java and popups easily. 

AFAIK those are the two most important things to most users about
galeon. And they expect to find them in galeon2. And because of the hype
caused by the delay of galeon2, if the users dont get what they expect
when galeon2 is realease there will be a lot of dissapointement which
will soon turn to rampant flaming - and galeon2 is such a great piece of
software, I'd hate to see it's release to be met with negitivity.

>         Galeon already has configurable toolbars. I has been proposed to
>         allow several different menu layouts.

I think that this would be a bad idea - it's all very well to have the
toolbar editable - but having the menus editable IMHO would just be a
messy way of avoiding the problem.

>         - 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...

Two different preferences - if it could be pulled off well it sounds
like a good idea - but then you will have users having to guess if
option X is in preferences or Advanced Preferences. Personally I think
that for things that will only ever be changed once gconf should be fine
- everything else should go in preferences. The preferences for a
web-browser are always going to be fairly detailed.

>         
>         - 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?

Not enabled by default IMHO. And if they are to be added they need to
work REALLY well and be fairly configurable.

>         - 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.

Personally I would vote gnome mimetypes only - they may not work sooo
well ATM but once they work it would be best to have them used system
wide. That said i may not understand the problem well enough to comment.



Galeon2 is really coming along well. Nice works lads.

-- 

	 .--= [ MArk Finlay - finlaymATeircomDOTnet ] =--.

	  [ sisob: irc.gnome.org www.gnomedesktop.org ]
		 [ MArk: www.gnomesupport.org ]
		[ http://advogato.org/person/sisob ]