Re: [Usability] New "Add to panel" dialog

[Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert novell com>]

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 22:33 +0200, Diego Moya wrote:
> Good work! I liked the previous version, and now that I've updated to
> Breezy I like the new one too. Incremental search and categories
> provide great advantage in scanning for a particular widget. I don't
> feel that the 2D layout brings any usability improvements. though. I
> preferred the linear layout since its easier to do a complete scan.

I agree - I liked the long descriptions on the old version more - the
new one no doubt fits more stuff on the scrolled view at once, but you
lose the descriptions which is kind of a shame.

> > What do you think of this new dialog ? Do you see any other possible
> > enhancements ?
> 
> It doesn't work for the task of adding *several* new applets. It
> shouldn't close when you press the + button, and the "Cancel" button
> should be renamed "Close". It's far easier pressing "Close" if you
> wanted to add a single applet that reopen the dialog and then scroll
> to the same point if you want to add another one.
> 

At least on the "old" dialog you can drag the stuff to your panel - it
has the added bonus that you can put them precisely where you want them.
I think this is a good alternative of leaving the window open - makes it
easy for a seasoned l33t-hax0r to populate his/her panel quickly with
the essential stuff, while not being annoying for the situations when
you just want to add one thing.

> A solution for many items would be to maintain the current form and
> provide a list of hyperlinks to the categories. The redundant indexing
> of Search and this "Table of Contents" would support both possible
> uses of browsing and looking for a specific item.

I think this might be interesting approach. Although, I sort of fear we
might be over-engineering this - we do not have THAT much stuff there,
it is organized in a nice list with big icons that are clear to see. If
we do categories, lets just not make it too fine-grained - I fear a case
where you are not sure of which category the applet would be in, and
thus the whole category list would just add an extra step to decide
where to look. It can just make stuff harder to find when there are five
(albeit shorter) lists of applets to wade through instead of one :) "Hm,
would this be in "utilities" or "amusements".. who knows?" The linear
list is not bad when the icons and descriptions are good.

I like the search field though - the hidden list-search of GTK is nice
but not very discoverable, so adding a search field for the current one
might just be good enough.

//Tuomas

-- 
Tuomas Kuosmanen :: tigert novell com