Re: [Usability] Terminology change: Reduce Newism

["David Adam Bordoley" <bordoley msu edu>]

From: Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>
> > I recently noted that a Nautilus string was changed to "Create
> > Folder"/
>
> Then I will need to file a report asking them to revert that.

Yeah, especially considering that virtually every other file manager in 
existance using the New Folder terminology. [1] 

> I had hoped they whole Launcher terminalogy would be dropped long ago and
> replaced with "Shortcut" (was it Anna or was it the Sun usability review
> that pointed out how this confused users?).  I dont really appreciate the
> distinction of a Launcher being a shortcut/link to a program. 
>
> I strongly feel that terminology like Launchers instead of Shortcuts and
> Druids instead of Wizards were just changes for the sake of being
> different that actually harmed usability. 

Shortcut is already used to describe keyboard shortcuts, and hence i believe 
the docs team wanted to avoid having a single term with more than one 
meaning. I think i filed a bug on this once as well. 

> > Examples of Newism can be found in Epiphany where we have "New Window",
> > "New Tab" and "New Bookmark".
>
> In many situations Tabs are about window management, you are not so much
> creating a New Tab as you would create a page or a sheet in workbook as
> creating a Tabbed View.
> I do believe the are potentially cases where Newisms could be removed.

First we don't have New Bookmark in epiphany. We have "add bookmark" and 
"bookmark link" as menu commands, although I'd prefer that we revert to 
"Bookmark Page" in place of "Add Bookmark".[2] 

Regarding New Tab/Window. I've never really been comfortable with the 
concept of a New Browser window/tab. Users don't manipulate browser windows, 
they manipulate web pages. The main issue has always been the fact that 
there is no simple way to open a new web page (url, web address, file 
addresss etc.) withough first opening a browser. One idea that I've been 
working on is a simple panel applet for opening urls (and searching). [3] At 
least for me, this has eliminated my need to ever open a "New Window" in 
either nautilus or epiphany.[4] 

> You may have noticed in Abiword that we dont have "New Header" or "Insert
> Header" we just have "Edit Header" and if one does not exist already we do
> the obvious thing and create one for you to edit. 

<snip/> 

> Actually now that I think about it we might just need to remove the verb
> entirely becuase of ugly redundancey of having the menu Edit, then an menu
> item repeating the word Edit again.  The devil is in the details. 

Sounds innovative! :) Edit->Header is probably good enough. Alternatively 
you could just allow direct manipulation of the header in the document, 
although I haven't use abi in a while so perhaps there is more to it than 
that :) 

dave 

[1] Though I do wonder if I may be somewhat at fault here. A few months back 
I considered using create instead of new, but calum sufficiently convinced 
me that it was a bad idea. 

[2] When "add bookmark" was in the file menu we used "Bookmark page..." 
Considering that both links and pages can be bookmarked in epiphany i think 
"bookmark page.." is probably a better label. 

[3] Not to advertise my own project or anything :) 

[4] In fact in nautilus i think the concept is even more absurd as all file 
system location should be available from the desktop imo (ala macos, windows 
etc.).