Re: [Usability] Re: on gconf-edit

[Kirk Bridger <kbridger shaw ca>]

Nerds used to joke about how people are unable to set the time on their 
> VCR, so that it would keep blinking 00:00. Modern VCRs just fetch the 
> current time from the teletext signal. Is this voodoo (from the users 
> POV)? Certainly. But the point is, it *just works* and that's what 
> counts. When the user isn't intimidated with all the technical fluff of 
> a device, but instead feels that he masters it, perhaps he'll be 
> encouraged to learn more about it? Wouldn't that be better than forcing 
> him to deal with all these scary small buttons that might as well cause 
> the apparatus to explode?

Reinout, this is an excellent example of when things actually get too magical.

I'm a fairly adept computer/technology user.  I recently bought a new
VCR with this ability, and was charmed to see it work.  it was pretty
cool, and made the cheap VCR suddenly seem like a good buy.

However, several months later we had a power outage.  After the power
came back up, the flashing began, and the time was never set.  Because
the thing's inner working were so hidden from me and there was no way to
access things to set manually, I was really frustrated.  Was something
wrong with the VCR?  Maybe the cable feed?  I had no way to even look
into this problem - the VCR no longer had buttons or menu options to
manually set things and there wasn't much I could do with the other part
of the equation - the cable line.  I unplugged it etc, but it didn't fix
the problem.

The problem ended up being with the cable provider's feed.  But as an
end user I found the entire thing very frustrating, and I looked at the
VCR differently from then on.  It was something I couldn't trust,
because I had no way of dealing with it if it malfunctioned.

I think this is the general argument people are making against too much
"simplification".  Forget about user groups - advanced, beginner etc. 
When something breaks, people want it fixed.  If we don't provide them
the means of understanding what is broken, and how to obtain help with
it, then I think we've taken the magic too far.

Even an entry in the VCR manual describing the auto-setting feature, and
how to troubleshoot it, would have been helpful.  But ideally I would
want an interface with the clock, so I could set it manually.  Then when
the cable feed came back on it could automatically correct the time, and
re-sync.  Call it an advanced feature if you want, but the bare minimum
is to inform the user as to what is going on (display the word 'syncing'
instead of 12:00 over and over) rather than keep them in the dark. 
"Ignore the man behind the curtain" is no way to make software or
hardware.

If something in Gnome breaks, I think it is important that users be able
to find out what broke, and how to fix it.  At the very least they
should be able to understand that it has, in fact, broken.  The fixing
can run from simply filing a bug report or restarting the app, to
opening up an advanced debugger.  But this is off veering topic.

On topic - If we remove the ability of the user to understand what is
going on and to obtain help with a problem, then the magic has gone too
far.  

This "too much magic" concern is the point I want to make.  I want to
help make the desktop environment usable, but I don't want to make it
difficult for users to interact with at all points of their usage.  And
I can guarantee you that they will encounter times when it will break. 
In these cases we need to provide them with the required tools and
interactions to ensure they can cope properly.



> > You click Download - *poof*, file is downloaded "somewhere" -- now it's
> > up to you to figure where exactly, or give up searching. In my case that
> 
> By default, Epiphany will launch whatever application is specified as 
> the default handler for the mime type of the downloaded file. If one 
> isn't specified, indeed the file "disappears" into the Downloads folder 
> (or whatever other folder you specified in the Epiphany preferences). 
> I've filed bug #155833 to make this a bit more obvious and open the 
> download folder upon completing the download.
> 

I have a few comments when reading about Epiphany's download system:
the user tries to download a file.  Poof it disappears and another
application tries to open it.  First of all - who said I wanted to open
it?  I download files for later perusal all the time.  Second of all, if
we're automatically guessing what application to use then we better make
sure there is a very clear way for users to set these settings, and
change them whenever they want.  My version of Gnome (2.6) doesn't
present a nice interface to this - it's a little intimidating.  So
having filed that bug I thank you - it is needed.



I hope this wasn't too far off topic to be understandable.

Kirk