[Usability] To err is human

[Sunnan <sunnan handgranat org>]

One important part of usability is to handle user failure gracefully,
in a non-confusing way. I like Emacs, but one mispressed key can cause
great confusion, especially if you're not used to it. (WYSIWYG word
processors like Microsoft Word also has this problem; I was teaching
an older man (with no computer experience at all) how to use his new
computer and he often accidentally altered the font size, without
realizing it.)

An example with Gnome is the menu bar at the top of the screen. I like
to use it with the mouse button depressed (like old Mac OS), instead
of clicking once to open and once to select. This often, if I make one
move slightly wrong, results in dragging an icon to the panel instead
of selecting it. It happens almost half the time I use the menu.

Since I understand what's going on, it's easy to just delete that icon
and try again, but it's still annoying. To a new user, it's more than
just annoying, it's confusing.

To handle user fallibility is something we need to put greater
attention to in the future. It would give a sense of "robustness",
"solidness" or "dependability" which I believe is welcome.

(With this particular issue (the panel menu bar), one solution might
be to require a short delay between the user releasing the mouse
button and allowing dragging. I don't advocate this solution over any
other, nor claiming that it would completely solve the problem, but I
feel bad pointing out problems (even very real ones such as this)
without suggesting solutions.)

Thanks for reading this,
Sunnan