Re: Dynamically changing GUIs in general [was Re: [Usability] xscreensaver UI update]

[John Spray <jcs116 york ac uk>]

On Thu, 2005-04-14 at 22:07 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> There is a good reason I didn't want to comment on this thread until now.
> I honestly don't think I have ever wanted to configure screen savers since
> I started using Linux, randomly cycling through different screensavers is
> such an elegantly simple solution and does exactly what screensavers are
> supposed to do by avoiding the same patterns onscreen for any great length
> of time.  Clearly I am not the target user of the Screensaver Preferences
> dialog but my point is that anyone who even goes to the screensaver
> preferences dialog will probably already be the kind of user that
> expects flexibility

The screensaver really is quite a unique case in the "how configurable?"
debate, in terms of the target audience.  The people who want to pick
and choose screensavers are not in general power users, they're
nontechnical people looking for quick and amusing visual customisation.

There is no practical reason for customising (or even having a choice
of) screensavers.  The trouble is that by now people are very accustomed
to it, and it remains one of the few immediate nontechnical "wow"
qualities of a nice linux distro as opposed to some other OS: many
screensavers, many games.

Based on that, I would argue that the dialog could be reduced to the
treeview (with <None> and <Random> options) and the preview pane.
Changing the time after which the screensaver comes on is excessive
customisation, and the option to lock the screen could be shifted into
the advanced section.  The dialog would thus be optimised for the only
real use: "Wow, looks how many pretty screensavers I have!".

John