Re: [Usability] doing root stuff as normal user without shell or any obscure methods - increasing usability with just a text box

[David Christian Berg <david sipsolutions net>]

Hey Linux Power (Name would be nice :-),

I totally agree with your thought, since I was bothered by not being
able to do stuff myself.

The dialog has to be expanded though. Sometimes it is not necessary to
be root, but it's enough to be some other user (who might just happen to
stand right besides you in real life), to access a file. The dialog
should then show a comboentry with all the users having the required
rights (maybe when opening file read only users should be marked as
such) and be defaulted to the owner.


What I don't understand is why you think it maybe should be a gconf
setting.
I mean the user is confronted with a dialog anyways. A request for
entering a password doesn't bother him more than the "Access denied"
kinda thing. The only difference being that he has to press Cancel
instead of OK.

I'm thinking of a dialog like this:

____________________________________________________________________
Permission Denied!
--------------------------------------------------------------------

You don't have permissions to view [run,edit] this file [program, user]!

View [Run, Edit] file [program, folder]
as        [User ComboEntry]
Password: [Password Entry]

                                                      [Cancel] [OK]
_____________________________________________________________________


The question is how to deal with Read Only files... maybe this should be
a gconf/Desktop preference. Whether it'll pop up the dialog to use
another user with an option to "View only" or if it just opens it as
view only right away...

Is this something for the HIG maybe? Is there anything on this topic?

David