Re: [Usability] search is not easy to find aka "a few minutes with gnome virgins"

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Thu, 8 Jun 2006, [iso-8859-1] Loïc Minier wrote:

> Michael Gilbert (michael.s.gilbert -at- gmail.com) explained his
> experience when introducing GNOME to people otherwise running Windows in
> Debian bug http://bugs.debian.org/371882:
> """
> at work the other day a couple windows-locked coworkers of mine were
> attempting to use a fedora system.  they were attempting to figure out
> if a particular application was available on the system.

I do think things would be easier for windows users (in fact easier than
windows) if Gnome were using a single main menu on the bottom left corner
which is what Novell are doing.  Strangely enough it was Novell/Ximian who
proposed the two panel layout in the first place even though they have
since abandoned it (this was discussed quite recently but I dont expect
the two panel layout to go away anytime soon).

The run dialog can be useful in this case.  If you know the application
name and type it in then if it is installed the icon will appear in the
dialog and when you hit okay the application will run.  If you do not know
the application name (why not?) the run dialog (or some versions of it at
least) have an expander which opens to show a flat list of available
applications.

I cannot say about Debian but while using Ubuntu I did notice I sometimes
applications do not appear in menus right after you install them but a
logout and log back in usually sorts that out.  I'm trying to think why
you might need to search for these applications in the first place rather
than choose from what is available in the menus.

A package manager like Synaptic might be a good way to check what programs
are installed, it also includes a search tool.

> idea where to go to do a file search (they expected it to be in the
> start menu, but gave up after they found it wasn't under applications).

A file search is intended for documents and other user files

If you are looking for programs you are not expected to use the file
search.

> so then they tried nautilus, but couldn't figure out where to go.  they
> dropped down to / where they were even more dumbfounded.  a comment was
> "what are all these  directories and how am i supposed to find anything
> in this mess."

Not much change from Microsoft then.
;P

> i suggested looking in /usr/local and /opt but both came up empty.

If you have given up on the Desktop and had to resort to the command line
then a good way to find things is using the "locate" utitlity.  When
hunting for programs the command "apropos" can be very useful too
(especially on BSD where the man pages are better).

> i suggested that they try the search under the gnome places menu, at
> which point they were able to find some similarity to their
> expectations.  at first they used the defaults and only searched in
> their home directory (inadvertently assuming that the file must not be
> on the disk even though their search path was too limited), at which
> point i said you should search from the / directory.  they opened the
> gnome file selector, and could not figure out how to pick / (in fact
> they didn't understand the concept of /, or how it relates to something
> like c:).  i also didn't know how to select / directly from the gnome
> file selector this, but eventually figured out if you select the topmost
> directory breakout at the top of the file selector  that you will get /
> as your selection.  this is very non-obvious and needs to be fixed.  so
> they tried their search, which completed *way* too fast for their
> expectations (likely because they are used to windows searches taking
> significant time to search an entire disk because file lists are not
> cached as scrollkeeper does).  so i did a "find / | grep fname" which
> also came up empty to indicate to them that indeed the file they were
> looking for was not on the system.
>

> at one point another comment was "it seems like they do things
> differently just to be different," referring to the gnome desktop in
> general vs windows.

*cough* *cough* splutter!  Understatement.  Things have gotten better and
are getting better all the time, file bugs where you see them.

At least horrible anachronisms like the "Druid dialogs" are on the way out
(that really was a case of being different from Wizards just for the sake
of being different).

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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