Re: [Usability] "Advanced" button?

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2006, Thomas Winwood wrote:

> Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:09:09 +0000
> From: Thomas Winwood <jormundgand ketsuban net>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] "Advanced" button?
>
> GNOME has the image in the Linux community of being simplistic or
> featureless due to its preference not to add an option for everything
> under the sun. Why does GNOME not use an Advanced button to hide pickier
> settings keeping the regular user's experience the clean GNOME look
> which is desired?

Nautilus.  That is a big part of the reason.

Previously Nautilus made a lot of use of "Advanced" settings,
unfortunately most users ended up wanting to access one or more advanced
setting.  It was an unmitigated disaster.

It is true that in the balance between simplicity Gnome has gone for
simplicity first and only now are people really starting to look at
ways to add back the flexibility without making a horrible mess.

On top of the difficult problem of decided what "Advanced" actually means
(or "regular user" for that matter[1]) it can be used as a poor excuse for
not making a decision and setting good defaults most users would be happy
with.

If there are specific features you think we have done a poor job of
presenting perhaps you could let us know and we could try and find ways to
add more flexibility for those cases without spoiling the simplicity we
have at the moment.

It is worth noting the recent outburst from Linus were actually in
response to a developer who was making the effort to try and expose more
functionality in a clean way, and you will often find there is much "work
in progress".

- Alan H

[1] There have been repeated calls for us to figure out who our audience
really is and come up with clear Personas and Archetypes of those users to
help use when making design decisions.  No one has gotten around to it
yet.