Re: [Usability] [Yet Another] New File Chooser Design

["Liam R. E. Quin" <liam holoweb net>]

On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 09:37, Luke Hutchison wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 02:48, Maurizio Colucci wrote:
> And maybe you could be interested in this: 
> > 
> > http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/basics/badInterface.html
> 
> Thanks for that link -- it seems to state pretty unequivocally that
> adding a menu bar to a modal dialog is always the wrong thing to do.

A file chooser shouldn't be modal.  You should be able to interact with
the application in other ways while File->Open is available.  I hate
having to press Cancel and then choosing File->Properties (or whatever)
to find out which docs I already have open, for instance.

> So -- is it possible that usability guidelines can be violated, when
> actual user tests indicate that breaking some rule actually makes an
> application more usable and intuitive to the user?
"intuitive" means, "can be deduced from your experience with the system
so far".  The more exceptions you have, the less intuition people can
develop and use.
> 
> You could look at it two ways:
>  -- The File Chooser is modal.  It should never have a menu bar.
>  -- The File Chooser works with files.  It should work like Nautilus,
> and look like Nautilus, as much as possible, for consistency (but be
> modified to fit File Open / File Save use cases better).
or, -- The File Chooser should not be modal, and should be Nautilus, and
you should drag to/from Nautilus windows to load and save.

If you make the thing look just like Nautilus and cripple it so things
that work in Nautilus don't in your file chooser, what did you achieve?
Confused users! :-)

Best,

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Ankh: www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org