Re: [Usability] UI review of overwrite dialog

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

Karim Nassar wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2005-03-31 at 13:17 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> >
> > I remember asking for something like this before and being told that
> > overwrite all was an exteremely bad idea, not something you would
> > want to hit accidentally.

I have a dastardly plan to abolish this alert completely ...

> Seems to me, this is inherently safe when ripping CD's to their own
> album directory, which is the default in SoundJuicer, no?

This would be true, except for a bug: where there is no album/artist 
information available, Sound Juicer copies every album into the same 
"~/Unknown Artist/Unknown Title/" folder with the same filenames. Oops!

So, step 1: Fix that bug, by using "unknown album", "unknown album 2", 
"unknown album 3", etc. (Like the default folder names created by 
Nautilus, these names should be all lower case, to visually distinguish 
them from human-meaningful names that are usually Capitalized.)

> The worst thing that could happen is you spend time waiting.

That would be true, except for another bug: if you realize that Sound 
Juicer *is* just replacing existing files with identical files, and you 
click "Cancel", it doesn't actually cancel -- it leaves you a partial 
file for whatever track it was working on. That could be improved 
slightly by using the more accurate term "Stop" ... but only slightly.

So, step 2: If Sound Juicer is copying to a destination where a file 
with the same name already exists, copy to a temporary file first, and 
replace the existing file with the temporary one only when it's 
finished. That way, no matter when "Stop" is clicked, you're left with a 
complete copy of each track.

There, we've fixed all the situations where replacing might cause 
dataloss. Or have we? What if the existing files were created by another 
program (or even a future version of Sound Juicer) at a different 
bitrate, or with a better encoder?

So, step 3: If a file with the same name exists in the destination, and 
the temporary file (once created) is found to be different from the 
existing file, append the detectable difference to the name of the new 
file in in parantheses. For example, "Real Estate (192 kbps)", or "Real 
Estate (SoundJuicer)", or (as a desperate last resort) "Real Estate 
(SoundJuicer 2.10)". For bonus points, if this is true for all tracks in 
the album, append to the album name rather than to every track name.

> If the dialog warns properly, this is a non-issue.

Step 4: Now that overwriting is no longer at all likely to cause 
dataloss, and now that clicking "Cancel" is safe, we can advise of 
overwriting in the progress window, and get rid of the alert.
 ________________________________________
|:::::::: Copying "Anthology" ::::::::(-)|
|                                        |
| Tracks remaining to copy:           17 |
| [########:::::::::::::::::] (  Stop  ) |
| __                                     |
| \/ Time remaining: about 31 minutes    |
|     Current track: Real Estate         |
|             Speed: 3.4 *               |
|                                        |
| *All remaining tracks have previously* |
| *been copied into the same folder.*    |
|________________________________________|

(Why is the text at the bottom of the progress window? Because it's 
dependent on the stuff above it, i.e. what track you're on. If you've 
previously ripped tracks 5 to 27 but are now ripping tracks 1 to 27, the 
note shouldn't appear until you get to track 5.)

Bonus alert removal: When finished, don't say "The tracks have been 
copied successfully" -- it's not true if I skipped all of them, and it's 
annoying even if I didn't. Instead, if any tracks *were* copied, get 
Nautilus to open the actual folder window so I can see them for myself. 
This isn't necessary *ideal* behavior (I'm still thinking about that), 
but it's better than the current behavior, as follows. If opening the 
folder is what I wanted to do anyway, it saves me a click. And if it's 
not what I wanted to do, then closing the folder is exactly the same 
number of clicks/keypresses as closing the alert would have been.

Extra bonus usability suggestion: Set the metadata so that for every 
newly-created album folder, Nautilus opens it by default in List mode 
rather than Icons mode. For music albums in particular, people will care 
more about scanning long track names than about free-form icon positions.

--
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/