[Usability] Re: Proposed AbiWord preferences dialog mockup

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

Alan Horkan writes:
> > General:
> > 1. Why not move the statusbar and ruler prefs directly into the view menu.
> > Would make access to these much quicker.
>
> Dont have the latest version of abiword in front of me but I am fairly
> sure they are also avialable in the menu. 

If they are in the view menu than they seem unneeded in the preferences 
dialog, and just take up precious space imo. 

> > 2. I thought there was a global gnome pref for cursor blink, wouldn't be
> > better to use this pref?
>
> Probably, I expect the developers were not aware of this global
> preference if you could confirm that you didn't imagine it I expect they
> would add it at some point.

I don't have gnome in front of me right now either, but as I recall there is 
a cursor blink rate/blinking pref. I'm almost positive there is a gnome pref 
for this because for a11y you need to be able to turn off all animations 
flashings etc. 

> > 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?
>
> I think some people find them annoying (advanced users maybe).
> MS Word and The Gimp have this option too.

Yeah still seems like one of those lets get it right issues. In nautilus for 
example toolbar tooltips appear in the statusbar which i really like. 


> > You should default automatic save to on, thats a nice feature :)
>
> It impacts on performance and is not really necessary.  Besides,
> (depending on compile time options) if abiword crashes a Document.CRASHED
> file will be created so you wont lose any data.

WEll people are pretty notorious for accidentally not saving documents. [1] 
I really fail to see how autosaving every 5 minutes can really hurt 
performance that much. 

> > > [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.
>
> Abiword doesn't have a long launch time.  Abiword generally loads long
> before the splash screen is finished, the splash screen is
> seperate clicking on the splash screen dismisses it.
> A splash screen is more obvious than launch feedback.
> I dont know if abiword supports startup notification yet.

Yeah but splash screens are worst. FWIW gnumeric only shows a splash screen 
if the load time is going to be very long. I personally believe and think 
most of the ui team agree that startup notification is a much better general 
solution. 

> > 2. Why would you not automatically load all plugins? (legit question)
>
> Performance.  Some plugins are a bit big. 
>
> Why do you need to say legit question?

Oh just wanted to emphasize that i was curious as opposed to asking a 
rhetorical question. 

dave 

[1] MPT has a great rant about how users should never have to manually save 
documents, and Nils once told me that the original Xerox parc machine 
autosaved documents as well.