Re: [Usability] "Finish" vs. "Close" in gnome-control-center dialogs

[Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>]

On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 02:50 +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Mar 2006, Raphael Bosshard wrote:
> 
> > Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 11:49:36 +0100
> > From: Raphael Bosshard <whistler fnord ch>
> > To: usability gnome org
> > Subject: [Usability] "Finish" vs. "Close" in gnome-control-center dialogs
> >
> > Hello there,
> >
> > can someone of you usability-gurus take a look at h
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334947 and voice an opinion?
> >
> > The bug is about "Close" and a close-icon-button vs. a "Finish" and an
> > ok-icon-button.
> 
> Close has the advantage of an existing GTK_STOCK_CLOSE which if used
> correctly means it gets translated in GTK once and for all.  However the
> GtkAssistant (Wizard) will need to have a Finish button so there
> probably will/should be an item added to GTK for GTK_STOCK_FINISH too.
> 
> Since Dobey says the button label was changed to 'Finish' after user
> testing I'm not inclined to disagree with the nice people at Novell (but
> if you really wanted to nit-pick you could ask about how the testing was
> conducted, if the sample of users and test case was really representative,
> ask if an instant apply dialog is absolutely necessary and as has already
> been done in the bug report point out the inconsistency of doing it for
> only one applet ;)

You could also just go watch the test videos. The majority of them are
on-line. The only ones that are not up, are those that we cannot legally
put up, due to the users not signing public release forms. I believe
there are a few of these latter cases that used the background capplet,
but most of them should be on-line.

> Consistency is good.

Consistency is good. But what is consistent is arguable, and usability
should take precedence. The affirmitive button is still in the lower
right corner. The difference is now that it is actually affirmitive.
Close is not an affirmitive label, and the "x" icon is confusing. Had
I the time to make similar changes to all of the other capplets, I would
have. However, there is nothing stopping us from doing it now really.
We could very easily fix this in 2.14.1, or 2.15.0. And I would argue
that "Finish" may not be the best label for all capplets either. I think
it needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis, and the best possible
label/icon combination which is actually affirmitive, be used. And for
what it's worth, the OK label/icon are horrible for many reasons, so I
would recommend against using them.

-- dobey