Re: [Usability] GNOME UI principle: All applications should save internal state?

[janne <jan moren lucs lu se>]

mån 2004-04-05 klockan 09.33 skrev Ryan McDougall:
> Do you agree that all applications should save their state such that
> they are no different from the time they were close to the time they
> were reopened? If you agree should this be part of the HIG or similar UI
> policy? What are the positive or negatives of such a policy, were it
> implemented? Should there be a unified API/framework for apps to reuse
> so they can store their state?
> 
> As an example of an app that goes a long way to save state in a real
> spatial or sessional way, see Eclipse's workspaces. Epiphany and Pan
> also save their current workload state in the event of a crash, but
> should they *always* save their state (ie: save the current web pages
> seen, or items queued for download), even if they are terminated
> normally?
> 
> I think they should, and doing so provides a number of UI benefits.
> Consistent state meshes *especially* well with a spatial design, since
> the "real world" always has a consistent state. When I leave my papers
> spread out at work, they are sitting exactly where I left them the next
> day. I also think there should be a GNOME-wide policy and method to
> allow apps to save their state data is a consistent and easily
> manageable way.

Interesting idea.

As you point out, though, in many cases it is pretty fuzzy what "state"
really should mean. Consider a CPU activity monitor applet, for example;
when you restart, should it remember and display the graph from before
the reboot? Or if a particular set of network interfaces where active
before reboot, should they (through the network device control
application) by default attempt to reconnect using the same parameters?


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