Re: [Usability] Gparted: a usable program

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2006, Shaun McCance wrote:

> Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:09:25 -0600
> From: Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>
> To: David Christian Berg <david sipsolutions net>
> Cc: Usability <usability gnome org>
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Gparted: a usable program
>
> On Sun, 2006-02-05 at 11:45 +0100, David Christian Berg wrote:
> > Hey Kyle!
> >
> > I installed the newest version of Gparted, that can be found in Debian.
> > It's incredibly hard to test, because you don't know, what happens, once
> > you did a change. I think the interface needs an "Apply Changes" and a
> > "Discard Changes" button, that are greyed out, to tell the user, that
> > the changes made won't be instant apply.
> > These buttons should at the bottom of a "Changes Pending" list on the
> > right.
> > Furthermore the program should always be executed as root and hence ask
> > for the root password on start up.
> > As for the interface: I do agree with Alan's remarks, but am going a lot
> > further. There are many things, I'd instantly change.
> > First of all: The colours for used and unused. They are way to close to
> > one another. I can hardly tell them apart on my laptop. There is further
> > more no use to explain those, because they are self explaining in the
> > first place.
> > My suggestion is to use light shades of the colours indicating the
> > filesystem as background and using the colour of the filesystem for the
> > used space. That way one can get rid of the frames and still has all of
> > the information needed. Also decrease the height of the bar. it takes up
> > a whole lot of space, without any need.
>
> I'm going from screenshots only; I've not had a chance
> to try on GParted.  Although I'd certainly like to.
> I've got a partition I'd love to resize.
>
> In the US, roughly 10% of males have some form of color
> blindness.  I suspect the percentage is comparable in
> other parts of the world.
>
> Usage of color alone as an indicator of vital information
> makes an application completely non-accessible.  And we're
> not just talking about non-accessible to some small fringe
> group of people.  We're talking about one in every ten men.
> That group includes me, as well as a number of other Gnome
> developers.
>
> I don't know an ideal solution in this case.  With the wide
> borders I see in the screenshots, different stroke patterns
> could help.  But then, those are really wide borders.  For
> a wonderfully innovative solution to a problem like this,
> check out the "shapes" ball theme in glines.  I didn't do

Heres a screenshot I took a while ago
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/temp-folder/matchbox-gnome-games-glines-5orMore-002.png

Or if you are familiar with Puzzle Bobble notice how the bubbles all have
different textures and can be differentiated even without knowing the
colours (it is quite subtle though).
Same goes for Monkey Bubble
http://home.gna.org/monkeybubble/images/scr-network.png
(unfortunately Frozen Bubble failed to do this by default only as an extra
option).

> the artistic work to make it happen, but I did do some of
> the complaining the may have contributed to it. ;-)

You were totally right to complain.  Accessibility is good for everyone.
Even those who think they dont need accessibility now (they do) will
probably need it later.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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