Re: [Usability]HIG compatability for grubconf

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

Hello Joseph,

On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Joseph Monti wrote:

> Would you mind taking a look at our app and providing a few pointers?

Thanks for taking the time to request advice from the usability project!

I will try to make a few remarks based on your screenshots, perhaps a more
extensive review will be possible once I've used it (or perhaps others
will do so).

* Why has the tabbed notebook model been chosen? Generally this approach
is more useful for properties notebooks of objects than it is for
applications. Unless of course, you want GrubConf to fit into the control
center?

* The 'About' tab is functionally incomparable with the other tabs. I
suggest putting this in the Help or having a button / menu item with a
stock About window.

* What happens when I click 'Cancel'? If it closes the program, label it
'Close'. In fact this goes for OK as well. I see a Revert button, so I
suppose any worries about a user panicking and wanting to exit
without changing anything are unnecessary.

* The File and Kernel Name fields could probably use a Browse... button.

* The six-button matrix in the second screenshot looks confusing, because
the top three buttons have another "area of activity" than the bottom
three, yet the six buttons are grouped like they belong together. I
suggest to place the top three buttons vertically on the right hand border
instead.

* a [+ Add] button clamors for a [- Remove] button, instead of a [U
Delete] button. Bonus points: the user is less likely to think the entire
selected OS is about to be trashed.

* You have a table with an asterisk indicating which one is the default,
and a checkbox to set a list item to default. It would seem that just a
radio button group would be more fit for this...

* The Apply button in the third shot is probably correct because the
configuration could become invalid if each change were applied instantly.
So here, too, OK and Cancel can be replaced by just one Close button.

I haven't checked each suggestion for HIG-compliance myself, so take it
with a grain of salt ;)

-- 
Reinout van Schouwen			Artificial Intelligence student
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778
GPG public key http://www.cs.vu.nl/~reinout/reinout.asc