Re: [Usability] The ``Replace File'' dialog should display the two file sizes, times, etc.

[Eric Larson <elarson novell com>]

Hi, 

On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 10:32 +0200, Christian Neumair wrote:
> Am Freitag, den 29.07.2005, 23:20 -0400 schrieb Jason Hoover:
> > On Fri, 2005-07-29 at 15:03 +0100, Phil Bull wrote:
> > > On 7/29/05, Jason Day <jason s day gmail com> wrote:
> > > > Well, I decided to have a go at it:
> > > 
> > > I had a go too:
> > > 
> > > http://www.geocities.com/philbull_tk/gnome_dlg_mockup.png
> > > 
> > > The text is a bit confusing/ambiguous and the dialog is pretty big.
> > > 
> > > Thanks
> > > 
> > > Phil
> > > 
> > 
> > I like this one too, it tells the user almost exactly what's going on,
> > but I have a few suggestions/questions.
> > 
> > *There should be a select/de-select all/invert options, perhaps context
> > menu.
> > 
> > *Will the view be expanded by default?
> > 
> > *There should be a way to Rename. Perhaps a context menu? Have the
> > "Existing file" column change to "File will be renamed to:" to
> > illustrate.
> > 
> > *As Eric said, there should probably only be an "Overwrite selected"
> > option, but I think perhaps a "Skip All" button should be the default on
> > the far right for our friend Mr. Point-and-Grunt.
> > 
> > *Hmm, entering the distracting pink flamingo territory, a tooltip to get
> > more information on the file, or maybe a properties context menu?
> 
> I've placed a proposed implementation of such a dialog under [1,2], which is losely
> linked to your proposal. You will simply have to unpack the attached
> testconflict.tbz2 file and enter "make".
> I am heavily interested to get a similar dialog structure into Nautilus
> 2.14. Any comments?
> 
> [1] http://manny.cluecoder.org/file-revision-dialog/conflicting-file-revisions.png
> [2] http://manny.cluecoder.org/file-revision-dialog/testconflict.tbz2

I think the largest issue that is not being addressed is what the
defaults will be. By having a new interface for dealing with many files
to replace or skip, we run the risk of confusing the user. We are
essentially looking at creating a dialog that is more of an application
than a simple question the user needs to answer. The other thing to
consider is how it fits within the scope of the desktop as a whole. This
dialog is not like other dialogs. This means that the user may have to
spend time to analyze the interface to do a task. In some cases this is
good, but overall it doesn't give the user control. While the old
interface is nothing to ooh and ahh over, it does a better job of
staying out of the way for the user and handles the default more
gracefully than the mocku ups we have seen here on the list (even though
the all have looked very nice ;). 

Eric