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

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Diego Moya wrote:

...

> > 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.
>
>
>
> On 20/10/05, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> > Calum Benson commented on this before and I will repeat my comments at
> > from the time.  Both the current dialog and new dialog you are proposing
> > are trying to deal with the problem of large collection of applets and I
> > feel neither succeed with this very well.  Unless the number of applets
> > can be kept much much smaller I'm a whole lot happier with the using menus
> > and submenus as older versions of Gnome used to do.
>
> Submenus are a usability nightmare - they're hard to navigate both for
> they're difficult to open with the mouse and because they hide their
> contents from sight. I prefer a  plain list of big icons anyday.

I expect part of it is that I am also familar with Microsoft Windows which
depending on your configuration allows you to access the control panel
items as menu items.  There was a Tweak UI option (at least for older
versions of windows) which allowed the user to make the menus much more
extensive which improves discoverability direct access at the expense of
... navigation I suppose, but I prefer the consistent use of menus a
system I already know how to manage and can quickly read
thanks to straight alphabetically sorted columns.

It seems like a lot of work for not much gain and developers are
determined to scupper any system by including far too many applets to be
easily managable.

Test this system and show it working well with a substantially large set
of applets and your arguements would be more convincing.  If I changed
applets with any frequency I would spend some time figuring out how to
revert to just menus but maybe there is a bigger issue which could be
tackled instead, perhaps better drag and drop would make the Add Panel
dialog less necessary.

So far with the past few iterations I think we have been trading one set
of problems for another and inflicting a whole lot of software churn on
users.

- Alan

P.S. I am on the Usability list, please do not CC me.