Re: [Usability]Keeping the Quit menu item



... not to dampen the excellence of your email here, Jeffrey, but my
Galeon 1.3.3 has a quit item at the bottom of the file menu... also
activatable with Ctrl+q... does yours not?

-jag

On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 11:25, Jeffrey Baker wrote:
> This email is inspired by Galeon 1.3.3, which is
> infuriating because it lacks the Quit menu item.
> 
> I think "Quit" needs to stay.  It is true that Quit
> originated on the Mac which couldn't multitask, but I think
> it is still relevant today.  Let's consider a few things:
> 
> There is no difference between "Close all windows" and
> "Quit".  If you close all the windows, you no longer have
> any way to interact with the application, so it should have
> exited.  It is no longer needed.  If it did not exit it is
> simply wasting resources.
> 
> Some justifcations for tossing Quit seem to imply that all
> applications ever started should simply be left running.
> This is totally obsurd.  I'd love to keep Evolution and
> Galeon running all the time, but I don't have 85 Exabytes of
> memory.  Actually I lied: I don't want Galeon running all
> the time.  I want it to go away.  It is the same reason I
> put books on the shelf even if I intend to read them again
> later.  If I just leave them laying about my tabletop gets
> crowded and unsightly.
> 
> Furthermore, the usability of certain applications is
> positively terrible without Quit.  In Galeon, for example,
> there is no way to discard your HTTP Authorization
> passwords, except exiting the application.  There is also no
> way to tell Galeon to remember the 18 windows you have open,
> except to "Quit with Session".  More on that later.  Finally
> there is no way to make Galeon discard your non-persistent
> session cookies except to exit.  Basically this is the same
> problem as the HTTP Authorization.
> 
> Now, I can see replacing Quit, but only *after* the above
> usability problems are addressed.  Think about the fantastic
> "Exit with session" feature in Galeon.  When you use it,
> Galeon exits and frees your resources.  But it remembers
> what was going on and restores the situation when you next
> start the program.  This is great!  It should probably be
> the default behavior of Quit.
> 
> How can you replace Quit and still be highly usable?  In
> my personal view, the user should be able to Quit any
> application and GNOME will take care of it.  Quit should
> close all the windows and exit the process while saving
> state.  If I Quit Galeon, for example, the application
> should exit, freeing all its memory, etc.  When I start it
> again, it should restore exactly the state it had before I
> exited.
> 
> On the GNOME and Window Manager side, it should be possible
> to Quit or Minimize All <whatever> Windows after
> right-clicking on the application in the window list applet.
> For example the present window list applet lacks the ability
> to minimize or close my 38 terminals in one stroke.  
> 
> Lastly, Galeon needs several improvements before it can
> jettison Quit.  Primarily it should convince Mozilla.org to
> stop being such a memory pig.  After that there must be a
> way to flush HTTP Authorizations and secure session cookies.
> These are HTTP protocol issues and we can't improve
> usability by just ignoring them.
> 
> -jwb
> _______________________________________________
> Usability mailing list
> Usability gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
Joshua Adam Ginsberg	       Cellphone: 970.749.8530
Rice University '02	       Email: joshg myrealbox com
St. Mark's School of Texas '98
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safety." - Benjamin Franklin
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