Re: [Usability] online/offline design

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 18 May 2005, Luis Villa wrote:

> Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 20:36:21 -0400
> From: Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>
> Cc: usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] online/offline design
>
> On 5/18/05, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 18 May 2005, Luis Villa wrote:
> >
> > > Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 18:47:40 -0400
> > > From: Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>
> > > To: usability gnome org
> > > Subject: [Usability] online/offline design
> > >
> > > Hey, all-
> > >
> > > I was wondering if anyone had given thought to designing a standard
> > > 'you're not online, so action X could not be completed [configure
> > > network][dismiss][cry in shame]' dialog for if/when apps start to poke
> > > networkmanger for that information? Or if such a thing would be
> > > appropriate?


> I was, uh, trying to be a bit less grand in scope :) Obviously it
> would be nice to catch some of these things and think through them,
> but I'm more concerned with the concrete-and-fixable-RIGHT-NOW issue,
> which is 'we have a way to tell if a machine is online/offline, and we
> have many apps which should fail gracefully if they are offline. What
> should they say when they fail?' So, uh, any suggestions? :)

Part of the problem is getting enough context to ask the right question.
Do we have enough information to distinguish the various types of users
and know the difference between a users that is temporarily offline or for
example a user that has not configured any kind of a network connection
yet?

For dial-up users the obvious thing to do is ask them to connect to the
Internet.  They should probably only be automatically asked once per
session and be expecated to manually request a connection otherwise.

For workstation users the problem is more likely to be wires disconnected
or misconfigured settings whereas for laptop users the connection might
simply be unavailable for a while.

I suppose it should be possible to tackle a specific aspect of this
problem and do something sensible, particularly if you can gather enough
relevant information and avoid showing the dialog in the wrong context.

Maybe a description of your specific use case could be used as a rough
archetype/persona for the laptop user and from there we could see about
making sure the dialog is only shown at the right time and when it is
really relevant.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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