Re: [Usability] New launcher edition dialog

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Sebastian Rittau wrote:

> Am Montag, den 27.03.2006, 22:01 +0200 schrieb Vincent Untz:
>
> > For... a really long time, we have a bug about simplifying the new
> > launcher dialog :
> >    http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95331
> >
> > I coded a new dialog to be put in gnome-desktop (or maybe
> > gnome-menus...). You can see screenshots in the bug. Please ignore the
> > english/french mix in the strings ;-)

Notice the order Anna Dirks used, most importnatly Name was listed first.
(If I understand correctly type might be better hidden behind a
discolsure section with some other advanced options.)

Coincidentally both Mac OS nine and Windows put the icon first and then
the name right beside it.  (In the bug report I linkted to several Mac OS
screenshots.)

> > I'd like some feedback on this. Is it totally wrong? (I hope not ;-)) Is
> > there some things to improve?
>
>       * What is the distinction between Name and Comment? As far as I

Name: EoG
Comment/Description: Picture Viewer

>         while the comment is displayed in the lower line. Does a user
>         really want to decide between that? Isn't a single entry enough?

Well yes, but I can think of a few applications which chose not to
describe themselves succinctly.

>       * In the link editor "URL" is probably the wrong term. Also, it

Acrony Heuristic:  Take any acronym, expand it, pick the noun and try to
summarize.

Universal/Uniform Resource Locator
Locator => Location
(okay so this is an old standard, didn't require any thought to unravel
it)

Text should be right aligned, it is so much more  readable that way.
It is also what the HIG specifies but the HIG leaves too much room for
exceptsions and everyone seems to think they are exceptional.

> > Do you agree we should go ahead and use this in 2.15?

It is a substantial improvement over the current dialog.

However I'm concerned it will die a death of a thousand cuts because it
isn't designed knowing in advance that others will want to expand it.

It is crude but in Windows the Shortcut dialogs are like the Properties
dialogs, the first tab is always labelled General and additional
functionality is added in extra tabs.

Having said that again your work is a obvious improvement and I hope
we can make progress with it.  Thanks for making a great start.

-- 
Alan