[Usability] Screensaver and idle time

[Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>]

This is something that cropped up in the recent UI
reviews we did.

The gnome-screensaver has a control "Set session as
idle after...", which sets the session idle time.
It doesn't necessarily start the screensaver after
this time, you need to also check a box:

Set session as idle after:
[---------------*----------] minutes:
  [] Activate the SS
  [] Lock the screen

This caused us a number of headaches in the UI review,
and the more I think about it, the more illogical it
seems, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, we couldn't work out a good way to label the
controls. That should be a red flag to begin with.
The order that springs to mind is:
 [*] Use the screensaver
   - start it after [-------] minutes
   - lock the screen
That's the way the user conceptualizes it: do I want
the saver or not? Supposing I do, how do I want it?
The current way is quite simply backwards, and the
logical way is not possible because of what the
controls actually do.

Second, I am currently writing the docs for this.
What do I say about this slider?
"Use the slider to set the screensaver delay time. The
screensaver will" ... um, no, it won't!
"Use the slider to set the session idle time"...
meaningless jargon that users don't understand.
"Use the slider to set the computer idle time"... I
don't want my computer to be lazy!
"Use the slider to set the time that your computer
must be unused to count as "... to count as what?
Again, I am depending on jargon.

If you can't explain something cleanly and simply,
then there is probably something wrong with it.

The user opens the Screensaver prefs to do one thing:
set the screensaver properties. When the screensaver
starts, what it shows, and whether to lock the screen.
That's it.
We should not be overloading these settings with other
things.

Thirdly, there is no logical reason to tie screensaver
activation to session idleness.
The user may want several things to happen when the
computer is unused. I can think of:
- mark IM as away
- show screensaver
- power down monitor
- hibernate

The last two have to go together. But why tie the
others? 
If I set my monitor to power down after 10 minutes,
and my screensaver to show after 15, then I won't get
to see it. Tough.
But the first two have no predefined order.
For example, suppose I run BOINC as a screensaver. I
want it to start early on, say 2 minutes. But I might
be in front of my PC reading paper documents while
that is happening. I want GAIM to be able to return me
to the desktop if one of my contacts comes online or
messages me, so I don't want GAIM to mark me as idle.

It's obviously too late to do something for 2.14, so
I'll try my best to come up with something for the
documentation for this as it stands.
But please could this be reconsidered?


		
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