[Usability] Re: Exposing Paths to normal users?

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 18:32 +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
> 
> > There _is_ a default audience if a project doesn't find a way to choose
> > one deliberately, and it's what I've called "by and for developers." If
> > there's no way to stay out of that gravity, it's better to embrace it
> > wholeheartedly IMO than to be there de facto and keep poking developers
> > in the eye. e.g. whether to expose paths in the UI; if most of your
> > users are shell users, GNOME probably made the wrong call.
> 
> Which do you think was the wrong call, hiding paths from users or showing
> them?  It is not entirely clear to me from your message
> 

What I'm saying is that right and wrong here is 100% relative to the
decision on specifically what GNOME is doing for specifically which
users.

If you debate some microdetail like whether to expose paths before
making a decision on who and what, you're just going to waste your time
and go in pointless circles.

> Paths are okay for Experienced shell users are obviously familiar with
> paths but most users are familiar with web browser and the location URIs
> are another form of paths.
> 
> I believe the "bread crumbs" idea in the GTK File Chooser and more
> recently in Nautilus was an interesting experiment but a bad idea because
> web browsing forces us to educate users about paths and URIs, and maybe
> eventually encourage them to learn about the shell and script some of the
> more tedious tasks.

Does GNOME care about encouraging people to learn those things? Does the
target audience have a chance of learning them? Does the target audience
care or truly benefit from learning them? Do they already know them? Do
they want a file manager at all? Would they even switch to Linux over
Windows or Mac, do they not even have a computer today? Why would they
switch or adopt?

You don't know the answer until you can tell me what GNOME's target
audience is and what GNOME offers to do for them over and above whatever
they already have in their lives today. You may as well close down
usability@ to all other discussions until you have the first-order one
and differentiate what GNOME offers to some specific group, from what
all existing products (software and not software) already offer to that
group.

Once you can explain that, you can say whether something like whether to
expose paths is even a relevant concern, and if so work on the answer to
the question.

Havoc