Re: [Usability] New UI for gnome-about-me capplet

["Johannes H. Jensen" <joh deworks net>]

Hi, I'm the author of the new proposed dialog and underlying code.  
See bug #321567 Thanks for helping improving it!

On 3. mai. 2006, at 17:06:50, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> On May 1, 2006, at 8:15 AM, Diego González wrote:
> > ...
> > i'm the maintainer of the gnome-about-me capplet that is in the  
> > control center, i'm thinking about redoing the UI for the new  
> > release of gnome.
>
> Thanks for asking for design help.
>
> First, can I make an unreasonable but hopeful request? Please,  
> please, please merge gnome-about-me with the Users & Groups control  
> panel! To have one graphical tool for changing your own account,  
> and another graphical tool for changing your account *and* other  
> peoples' accounts, is mind-boggling. Windows XP and Mac OS X have  
> each been using a combined tool for these tasks for over five years  
> now, regardless of what account privileges you have. I would be  
> delighted to help design a combined tool that would be easier to  
> use than either of them.

Good idea. This makes sense, however a normal user shouldn't be  
allowed (or interested) to see a list of all the other users.  
Additionally he/she should not be able to see any of the more  
advanced user options like groups, shell, UID, etc. If we could  
design a dialog that would hide all of this for the regular user, but  
show it for an administrator...

> Meanwhile...
>
> > Currently i have thought about something like the screenshot  
> > attached.
<snip>
> > Clicking on the change password would bring the dialog shown in the
> > second screenshot.
>
> First, the minor details:
> *   The "Change password" title should be "Change Your Password".

Done.

> *   Remove the padlock icon. This is a dialog, not an alert.

Dialogs aren't allowed to have icons? Loads of the other capplets  
have icons (Remote Desktop, Assistive Technology, Mouse, ...) - it  
makes it easier for the user to quickly understand what the dialog is  
about. Plus - it indicates wether the user has authenticated or not  
(closed/open lock).

> *   Remove the "Change your password" text. It's redundant with the
>     window title.

Done. Looks a bit weird without it though.

> *   "Close" should be "Cancel", and should activate on Escape, not on
>     any access key.

Hmm, at the moment the dialog only closes when the user hits the  
close button. It stays open upon a successful password change. In a  
way, this isn't exactly the nature of a dialog, but I think it is  
important to let the user know that his/her password was changed by a  
message in the dialog - rather than just closing it upon success.  
Therefore I think "Close" is more logical here - let me know what you  
think.

I'll see what I can do regarding the Escape key though. How is this  
done in the old dialog? In the glade file?

> *   The "Change password" title should be "Change Password".

Didn't you already address this? Or is are you talking about another  
title that I'm unaware of?

> However, the biggest problem is that the dialog is very wordy. Your  
> screenshot contains 58 words, and after the fixes above, it would  
> still contain 56. Fifty-six! Fortunately, that's easily fixed:
> 1.  Change "Current password:" to "First, enter your current
>     password:". (Yes, this is adding three words, but we'll make up  
> for
>     that later.)
> 2.  Change "Authenticate" to "Continue", and make it activate on  
> Enter,
>     not on any access key. (Yes, this means there are two buttons
>     activated on Enter, but we'll fix that in a moment.)
> 3.  Until the "Continue" button is activated, all the controls in the
>     dialog should be unavailable, except for (a) the "First, enter  
> your
>     current password:" field, (b) the "Continue" button, and (c) the
>     "Cancel" button.
> 4.  Once the "Continue" button is activated and you're successfully
>     authenticated, the "First, enter your current password:" field and
>     the "Continue" button should become unavailable, and every other
>     control should become available. (That solves the two-Enter- 
> buttons
>     problem: only one of them is available at any time.)
> 5.  Change "New password:" to "Now, choose a new password:". (Yes,  
> more
>     words, but hang in there...)
> 6.  Change "Retype new password:" to "Enter your new password again:".
> 7.  Delete the paragraph at the beginning of the dialog. (Huzzah!)

Good idea, though some of the labels might get a bit long, leading to  
an unnecessary wide dialog, don't you think? The behavior you are  
describing is very much how it's currently working - hitting Enter in  
the "Current password" field activates "Authenticate". Hitting Enter  
in the "New Password" field moves focus over to "Retype new  
password". Hitting Enter in the "Retype new password" field activates  
"Change password".

> 8.  Delete the sentence at the end of the dialog.

That sentence is actually our status message. It is used to indicate  
an error or to lead the user to the next step. If that is to be  
removed, we have to come up with some other way to report errors  
(which we've discussed in bugzilla).

> So when the dialog opens, you get:
<snip>
> From 58 words down to 22. Not too shabby.
>
> However, I'm extremely skeptical about your statement that "the  
> Linux way to change a password is a pain in the ass ... this is  
> usually a two step process and cannot be simplified further". Why  
> don't you allow entry of the old and new passwords before you try  
> authenticating the old one? Then when I click "Change Password":
> 1.  try authenticating with the old password
>     -   if it didn't work, return focus to the current-password field
>         and print an error underneath it
> 2.  if it worked, try changing the password
>     -   if that didn't work, return focus to the first new-password
>         field, and print the error underneath it
> 3.  if both of those worked, *then* close the dialog.

This is actually how it's done in the old password changer. I changed  
this as I think it's a more intuitive/logical/better/etc approach.  
Please see my comment on this at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/ 
show_bug.cgi?id=321567#c22

> If that's possible (and I can't imagine why it wouldn't be), so  
> people don't need to enter things in a particular order, we could  
> get even more concise:
<snip>
> Down to 19 words, even better.
>
> If you have time for all that and you want to get even more  
> sophisticated, you could adapt the non-intrusive error feedback and  
> password hints I specified for the "Name and password" section of  
> the Ubuntu Installer. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuExpress/ 
> GnomeUserInterface#head-8a3a02f3e65020cd3194ab8f5f2d8f35b6b4d211>

Very nice :)

We discussed something similar to this (more á la the approach used  
in OS X) at the bugzilla (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi? 
id=321567#c18). In OS X the error message appears *below* the  
erroneous text field, not to the right of it. Placing the error  
message besides the field works perfectly until the message gets  
rather long - then it might not fit in the dialog and it has to be  
resized/very wide. Unfortunately some of the error messages in the  
dialog are quite long (we might be able to shorten them).

If you have time, you might want to compile and run latest version of  
about me from CVS (which includes the new dialog) to see how it's  
functioning. It's not committed yet, but Diego will soon :)


Best regards,

Johannes H. Jensen
deworks