[Usability] [RFC] Proposed AbiWord preferences dialog mockup

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

> From: Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org> 
>
> I just compiled a bunch of screenshots of my mockup for a new AbiWord
> preferences dialog [1-4].
> Please have a look at them and make proposals on what I can still
> improve. I like it much more than the old dialog but I'm not completely
> satisfied. Especially the buttons IMO are far away from looking perfect.
> Thanks for your efforts! 
>
> regs,
>  Chris 
>
> [1] http://gnome-de.org/~manny/prefsmockup1.png
General:
1. Why not move the statusbar and ruler prefs directly into the view menu. 
Would make access to these much quicker. 

2. I thought there was a global gnome pref for cursor blink, wouldn't be 
better to use this pref? 

3. I think it would be better to move the toolbar editting interface stuff 
into a seperate dialog. In epiphany we use edit->toolbars. 

4. Why would you disable tooltips? 

> [2] http://gnome-de.org/~manny/prefsmockup2.png

I can't pin it down, but it seems like most of these prefs are technobabble. 
Shouldn't the right to left prefs just work automagically based on locale? 
The glyph prefs are particularly crypic and meaningless to 99.9% of people i 
would guess. Are there sane defaults that can be used instead. Seems odd to 
have a preference for one specific language. 

You should default automatic save to on, thats a nice feature :) 

> [3] http://gnome-de.org/~manny/prefsmockup3.png

If you've chosen to include a custom dictionary, why would you choose not to 
make suggestions from it? 

> [4] http://gnome-de.org/~manny/prefsmockup4.png

1. Kill the splash screen pref. Splash screens are poor excuses for long 
load times. It is especially unneeded now that gnome has application launch 
feedback. 

2. Why would you not automatically load all plugins? (legit question) 

3. Are preference schemes really necessary? Seems like something 1 out of 
1000 people will use. 


Hope these comments are useful. 

dave