Re: [Usability] Re: Nautilus Sendto -- opportunities for generalisation

[Daniele Levorato <daniele levorato infocamere it>]

> Would it be a good HIG? for example: "If an application want to put
> > something in a file-manager context menu (ex. Nautilus, gmc), then it
> > has to ask the user before attempting to do so".
> 
> Its very hard to do that with the way apps are typically deployed as
> packages. If the shared lib is there, every user on the system will see
> it. I guess if we add a per-user config for each application adding
> something we could change that. But when would this happen? on login? It
> can't happen on install...
> 

Sorry Alexander, I've missed your point or perhaps I wasn't very clear
in my mail ... well I'm italian, sorry for my english, I'm doing my best
;-)

So... "per-user config" at login... I can't understand: it's a good
practice to have a ".dummy" file/dir in users home dir for an
application called "dummy", where the appl can put all per-user
configuration stuff... just think about the ".gnome" dir: it's a
per-user gnome configuration, isn't it?

Now... It's as simple as that: at install (ok, we can say at first
execution) the application can present a kick-start wizard... a
configuration dialog (like the GIMP for example) to guide the user for
basic configuration (we know that many applications do this, it's a good
practice), there he can ask:
"Do you want the following nautilus-shortcut to be in context menu <list
follows>". And the user simply click yes or no and proceed with next
conf-issue... then at every time he can go to Edit|Preferences and
change his ideas about it...

> Its sort of lame to have a huge configuration dialog for this. If we
> have lots of menu items and don't want a huge menu, you'd need to
> disable them all by default. However, this would force every user to use
> the config dialog to use any of the features, something a lot of people
> will miss.

... well I don't know what is a "huge dialog" for you but all
Applications have one and I think a tabbed-pane named "GNOME
integration" with all gnome integration stuff won't really make useless
a Conf-Dialog! Then it is always possible to have an "advanced" tab
option if you prefer... many many application do so... so why not
including such usefull feature? .. just because having 1 option more is
bad and make conf-dialog too complicated? ... hmmm... but having
nautilus menu with many useless items that someone is not asking for is
even worse, isn't it?
... again it would be a very good HIG that all application have a "GNOME
Integration" pane, if and only if it claims to have any GNOME-Desktop
integration feature... just to make users feel at home with that...


> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>  Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
>                    alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
> He's a war-weary gay Green Beret in a wheelchair. She's a time-travelling 
> hypochondriac snake charmer on the trail of a serial killer. They fight crime! 

                                    
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