Re: [Usability] FOSA ideas

[Bryan W Clark <clarkbw clarkson edu>]

<snip who="Calum">
but it would be great if somebody could take a step back and just list
the user tasks we think we're trying to support here, before we comment
too deeply on any mockups 
</snip>

I believe we need a separation of FO and SA in the mockups, since people
have different goals with each we can't necessarily help them as much
with the same view.

In FO the user might be helped out more by:

	a preview of what the file is ( like nautilus does )
	an easy way to get to where the file is

In SA the user might be helped out more by:

	an easy way to get to where the file is
	not having to know what file extension to use when saving
	previews aren't totally necessary, but might help
		( users are probably more interested in the 		directory location, not
what the other files 
		around it are )

For this email I'll concentrate on the FO...

Personally when opening a file I would prefer a nautilus type view
because with the movie and picture thumbnailing that is built in there I
find it easy to get the exact file I want.  I'm sure as other thumbnails
come along for other file types it will get even easier for those types
as well.

So I made a quick mock up of what I'd appreciate in an FO
http://www.clarkson.edu/~clarkbw/clarkbw-FO.png

Note there are no file extensions, because the program i'm opening the
file from should have told the FO dialog what it can handle and I don't
need to waste space seeing that. (maybe an option to view extensions
would be good somewhere hidden in the gconf for those of you who will
flame over this)

Each file has a thumbnail of it's contents, this makes it easy to know
what I'm opening especially if I have a harddrive full of movies and I
don't remember the name, but do remember that it was the one with the
Bert and Ernie skit.

On the far left are the quick access buttons for quickly getting to your
HOME, Desktop, Documents and I threw in Network to show any
FTP/SSH/NFS/AFS type mounts you have.

At the top is a location bar, above it are the back/forward/up tool bars
from nautilus.

I left out the OK/Cancel buttons, but use your imagination and align
those nicely at the bottom right. (sorry just didn't remember them)

Note there is not place to type in the file name (some people might not
agree with this), I left that for the SA dialog since I'm only
interested in opening files that I can select from the list; therefore
the text box seems redundant. 

I did put a zoom control at the top right because maybe someone wants a
larger size thumbnail, my eye sight is pretty good but I'm young.

I left the throbber in there as well since network filesystems can
sometimes take a while and I'd like to get good feedback on whether the
system is really doing something or just stuck.

------

Anyway, this is not complete yet of course, but I wanted to throw out
those suggestions to everyone.

~ Bryan
---
Bryan W Clark
Graduate Estudiante
Math && Computer Science Dept.
Clarkson University
Potsdam, NY USA

http://www.clarkson.edu/~clarkbw/