Re: [Usability] Re: [Epiphany] epiphany toolbar/bookmarks

[mpeseng tin it]

>1) that the ephy-bookmarks-unhappy are just a "very low part of user base";
>
>2) that the new bookmarks system is an improvement for most users.
>
>With regard to 1) I can't but wonder how is it possible to say that
>since 99% of all browser users (on most platforms) are used to
>hyerarchical bookmark menus. Perhaps it's not optimal, perhaps is under-
>
>and misused, but this is what people expect to find in a web browser:
>you can easily move a Window user from IE to Mozilla (and then perhaps

>to Linux altogether), but I doubt that new and ex-Windows users would be
>
>less than puzzled by a completely different bookmarking method *without*
>
>having the chance to import their bookmarks and getting on thanks to a

>compatible system.

This is no unsubstantiated, I tried to explain the reason I think hierarich
way of organizing bookmarks does not work, in the first part of my mail.

The reason that IE ship a hierarchic bookmarks system does not mean 99%
of the users actually use the hierarchy.
In my limited experience non technical IE users:
- Do not use bookmarks at all
- Have a few of them not organized at all
- Very rarely they have one level folders

Which is quite similar to the situation where people save their files either
on the desktop, either in the Document folder, still not using the hierarchy
at all.

Additionally it seem to be proved that people hardly grok hierarchies and
that multiple submenus are really difficult to use. (Am I wrong ?)

As I said my experience is limited, maybe I live out of the real world ;)
But talking with other people that try to watch real users seem to confirm
this situation.
I dont have money or time to do real user tests... so this sort of observations
are the only data on what I can base my analysis.

It's also not true that you cant import your bookmarks. There are problems
with multiple levels hierarchies (which for what I can see is a very very
corner case for real users), but I think it's possible to improve even in
that case.

>Wrt to 2), I really don't know, all the more so because I still haven't

>played much with Epiphany. It could well be, though, that there are
>people out there who won't ever like the new method: I, for one, like
>the idea of a well organized hyerarchical bookmark menu/system, which is
>
>why perhaps I haven't used Epiphany a little more. Judging from the
>reactions on gnomedesktop there are many users who find the new system

>unwieldy: at this moment, it is not possible to rule out the idea that
a
>
>large part of present and future users won't feel completely at ease
>with the new system.

Did you notice the IHMO ?
There are a few things that make that opinion, but only user test could
prove it:

- Our design avoid deep hierarchies and submenus, which is teoretically
good from an usability point of view
- Several people, me included, started to use bookmarks only with epiphany
system.
- While designing the system indipendently we ended with something similar
to what apple did, and I guess they did user test.

While it's true that I cant prove the new system to be an improvement for
everyone, but just describe what I think are the positive points of it and
explain what reasons are beyond our choices, it's also true that gnomedesktop
discussions prove nothing, and they dont even try to build a rationale against
what we did.

If we followed them, now we would be back at GNOME 1, and we would be using
Velocity instead of Nautilus :)

Marco