Re: [Usability] A (rather long) list of GNOME usability issues



Am Freitag, den 14.10.2005, 22:31 +0100 schrieb Alan Horkan:
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Jason Day wrote:
> 
> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 14:01:01 -0700
> > From: Jason Day <jason s day gmail com>
> > To: Usability gnome org
> > Subject: [Usability] A (rather long) list of GNOME usability issues
> >
> > This list was posted by Wolki, on the Ubuntu Linux user forums. Most of his
> > points are GNOME issues, rather than specific to Ubuntu, and I felt that he
> > had a number of good points, that the developers should see. Here is the
> > link:
> > http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=75886
> 
> I'll attempt to summarize and respond to some of the issues
> 
> Raising Windows
> 
>   no idea

There is a feature request for this on bugzilla already, and code was
written [1].

> open location dialog spurious errors (my opinion not his)
> 
>   something I hope will be addressed or made irrelevant by larger changes

I have submitted a patch for that already, which still needs cleanup.

> Problem: A folder is a window. Unless it's a symlink, then a folder is
> multiple windows.
> Suggestion: Treat links to folders like the original folder.
> 
> sounds about right, an issue to for the Nautilus developers I guess.

No, no, no! :). We've changed the behavior multiple times forth and back
in the past because people are never satisfied. The conclusion was that
symlinks are more or less handled transparently on your shell as well.
ln -s foo bar && cd bar/ pretends that bar is a hierarchy on its own,
and that's what I think the symlinks are supposed to do. If you want
shortcuts, use the "Create Launcher..." functionality (for now only
available on the desktop :/)

> Icons on Desktop that *aren't* on Desktop
> 
>   it is stuff like this that makes me want to have the aforementioned
>   fake view of the filesystem mounted at ~ but if I recall correctly there
>   are a variety of messy implemenation details which complicate the whole
>   issue of removable drives

We're plugging in an abstraction layer (GnomeVFS) above the traditional
file system layer. I know, users don't care about that fact, but the
real solution is IMHO a desktop vfs that is *really* used by all
parties. Stuff like volumes or desktop shares just don't fit into the
mount concept, at least not as long we have broken kernel VFSes. One
day, GnomeVFS will be a wrapper around the Hurd's uber-cool concept (aka
provide transparent to everything below /) :P.

> Problem: There is no undo.
> 
> Calum Benson isn't happy about it either perhaps some people need to
> come up with clear plans and help a developer implement it.  again an
> issue which should be discussed with the nautilus developers.

Rename undo doesn't seem too heavy, undoing a move or copy operation
that involves many folders and changes to the source/target directory in
a clean fashion sounds way harder. I'm interested in whether you want a
global undo (for all windows), or whether each window undo history
should be treated separately. What if you close a window? One can make
this arbitrarily complex by storing the undo history of a window inside
the metadata system, but I doubt it's worth the pain for everyday use.
"Ooops, I didn't want to rename that" might be the most common use-case.

> Middle click in browser mode
> 
>   ... (might respond to this later, I'm sure the Nautilus developers will
> have answers)

I second your opinion. Middle-click should really open a new window in
browser mode.

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132339

-- 
Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>

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