Re: [Usability] Usable workspaces for everyone (was: Desktops View in Taskbar)

["Daniel Borgmann" <daniel borgmann gmail com>]

On 9/7/06, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> Please read this again as it is really important to understand how users
> can be confused:
>
> > > I can all too easily see beginners accidentally switching to another
> > > workspace and wondering where all their programs went and not realise
> > > how to get them back.

That's why I mentioned XGL. In six months rotating cubes or sliding
workspaces will be commonplace in all major distributions and that's
the earliest time when this topic becomes relevant again.

> I also mentioned how frequently users get trapped by Insert/Overwrite as a
> clear example of how easily users can be confused and not necessarily
> notice the implications of their actions.  Accidentally clicking on the
> workspace switcher and changing to another workspace is not something
> users will necessarily know how to reverse back out of without needing
> help.

Neither do they necessarily know how to reverse back out of minimising
or even maximising a window (I once had such a case, no kidding). The
same goes for accidentally hitting the show desktop button. All of
this is not good enough reason to disable all of those functions by
default, because sooner or later they will figure out how to undo
these actions.

Insert/Overwrite is hardly comparable. On the one side you press some
obscure button on your keyboard and the only visual feedback you get
is a tiny string in a corner of a window (if you're lucky), on the
other side you click on a widget and get very noticable visual
feedback of what's happening including a visual change of _the widget
you clicked on_.

> Perhaps some kind of suitable animation/decoration could make a future
> version much clearer, sure but I wasn't talking about future versions of
> workspaces which haven't been written yet.

Compiz certainly has been written yet. :-)

> > We should think for our users, not take the easy way out and take
> > possibilities away from them,
>
> We should provide sensible defaults.  Allowing users to "add to panel"
> does give plenty of possibilities irrespective of what is included on
> the panel by default.

Only that it isn't very logical that you "add to panel" to "increase
your working space". I'm not worried about my personal convenience,
I'm worried that your answer to a discoverability problems seems to be
to make it even less discoverable. To me, this is taking the easy way
out, not tackling the problem.

> I'm just stating my opinion.  Gnome has a feature enabled by default which
> Microsoft have chosen not to enable and it seems like neither will Apple.

I know that you are and I'm just discussing with you hoping that
something useful might come out of it. Do you even know if Apple will
disable the feature by default yet? Apparently they won't even have a
constantly visible workspace switcher like we do. One interesting
point is that the dock will show items from all workspaces. Maybe a
more sensible "foolproof" default would be to set the window list to
show windows from all workspaces by default. This way switching
workspaces wouldn't be worse than to accidentally minimise a window or
hit show desktop, since in all cases the user can use the window list
to get his windows back.

> I long ago accepted that enough people like workspaces that it is good to
> have them but I do not accept it is a wise default for the reasons already
> outlined.  It isn't like I am even pushing to have workspaces turned off
> by default, yet.  If I were an admin deploying Gnome or otherwise
> providing technical support to Gnome users it would be high on my list of
> things to lockdown to prevent accidents.

Bad enough, I hope you'll never be my admin. ;-)


Daniel