[Usability] gparted usability (new)

["B.Hakvoort" <bart hakvoort be>]

Hi folks,

Sorry for not responding earlier, i've been a bit busy the last few
days.
Anyway, i have subscribed to the usability list and am ready to talk
about gparted usability. I have had a lot of advice already, but most of
it was based on outdated screenshots and is/was already included in more
recent releases.

What would be the most convenient way to work for you? Should i provide
screenshots, a tarball or do you get the latest gparted from CVS
yourselves?
Don't worry about damaging your partitions. As long as you stay away
from 'apply', nothing will happen to your system ;)

Outstanding issues (posted by Joachim):
- Having the 'apply' and 'cancel' buttons and the device
  chooser drop-down in the toolbar saves screen space,
  but it's not the most logical place for them to be.

  (what would be a more logical place in your opinion? Also note
   i've added a device selector the the 'gparted' menu)

- why not show the bar graphs for all
  devices together, since they are all scanned on
  startup? The partition manager on Windows2000 lets you
  scale them relative to one another.
  
  (hmmz, imho this would take up a lot of space and i'm not sure if it
   would really improve usability (although i must admit i've never used
   win2000 partitionmanager.)

- I'd move the 'Partition' menu further to the left, or
  perhaps even have it as the first menu.

  (well, i've followed the HIG in this matter. see 
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/menus.html#menus-menubar)
   
- GParted->Filesystems should probably be under Help (or
  View?), and the label doesn't make it clear what
  choosing it will do.

  (view isn't the right place imo, since those menuitems control the
   interface (show/hide gui-elements).
   Good point about the label, maybe i should rename it to 'Filesystem 
   Information'. (although that's a bit long)

- Harddisk information is in a sidebar, but partition
  information has to be summoned in a dialog box. I'd
  say put both in the sidebar together, with the
  partition information part updating with the current
  selection.

  (Yep, this might be a good idea. I was about the remove the infodialog
   anyway because it doesn't add much usefull info. In fact, the only
   info in that dialog which is not in the mainscreen already, is the  
   sectorinfo which would easily fit in the sidebar.)


One more thing, someone (i believe it was Alan) proposed to removed the
legend. It takes up a lot of space and doesn't add any usefull
information.
I've tried it already and i really like it, so i'm inclinded to remove
it :)
Any more comments on this from an usability POV ?
   

Thank you very much,

Bart (plors)