Re: [Usability]Galeon 2 usability

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

On Mon, 2002-10-14 at 14:58, Janne Morén wrote:

> Well, as other have pointed out, the HIG are guidelines, and can be
> altered for specific reasons. I see the setting menu as providing some
> extremely good functionality, and it is reinforced by them all being
> collected into one place.

I fully agree that they're very useful features, and I'm certainly not
arguing that they should disappear from the menus.  I'm just
uncomfortable about seeing the word "Settings" creep back onto the
menubar-- it could open the floodgates for every other app out there to
want to add a Settings menu as well :)

I don't necessarily agree that the current Settings menu is 'reinforced
by them all being collected into one place', though, because I would
argue that they aren't all collected into one place at all.

For example, right now you have 'Zoom' on the View menu, 'Load Images'
on the Settings menu and 'Sidebar' on the Tools menu.  What is different
about all these 'settings' that they belong on different menus?  They
all affect the current view of the HTML page without affecting the
content of the HTML document itself... which qualifies all of them for
membership of the View menu :)

> A good suggestion I saw in this thread is to not have it as a menu at
> all, but to implement it as a drop-down toolbar item. It would be as
> accessible to the users as the menu, and not alter the menu structure.

Unfortunately, having functionality that is *only* available in toolbars
is also a breach of the HIG I'm afraid :)  There are also accessibility
implications there-- toolbars aren't keyboard navigable yet.  (Well,
okay, gtk toolbars aren't, and bonobo toolbars are, but not yet in quite
the way we'd like).

> Disabling them by default is fine. Removing them altogether is not.
> Also, there might be an idea to look at the gestures used in Mozilla to
> minimize dissociation between apps.

Yes, I'd agree with both of those sentiments.  (I've never used the
gestures in Mozilla either so I don't know how different they are).

> The major strength of Galeon1 has been that it is very powerful (with
> the Settings, gestures and combination of Tabs and windows) while
> remaining a clean browser. It would be a shame to throw it all away.

Well, you know us usability folks... we like to believe that the two
aren't mutually-exclusive :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems