... 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 -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin ---------------------------------------------------------
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part