Re: [Usability] Control Center Appearance Capplet

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

Hey Thomas,

On Mon, 2007-04-16 at 14:57 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:
> I'm currently looking at integrating the various appearance settings 
> throughout GNOME into a single "Appearance Settings" application for the 
> control center.
> 
> I have made some mockups, which can be seen here:
> http://live.gnome.org/ControlCenter/AppearanceSettings

This looks very good, apart from the "Options" tab. First, they're not
options, they're preferences, secondly, they're "Menu" preferences.
Menus and toolbars is a bit too long, just call it "Menus", or
"Toolbars".

<snip>
> Close Button
> 
> As you can see, there is no separate close button on this window other 
> than in the title bar. I know this has been discussed before, but would 
> it be impossible to require "GNOME Compliant" window managers to include 
>   a close button. My main reason for removing it is because of the Novel 
> usability studies that showed[2] several people did not understand that 
> the window was instant apply. I think the presence of a dialog-style 
> button bar suggests that the window is asking the user for some action, 
> when in fact this is not the case.

This is something that would need to be agreed for all the applications
across the board, not just the control-center capplets.

> 
> Dialog Window
> 
> Related to the above, I have also not set this window to be a dialog 
> window. The window is not asking for any confirmation or action from the 
> user, so I think it ought to be a "normal" window. We also had several 
> bug reports[3] requesting that the previous theme capplet have maximise 
> buttons because in contained a scrollable window. Metacity (quite 
> reasonably) does not allow maximise buttons on dialogs, so it had to be 
> changed to a normal window.

That seems fair, but would also need to be changed across the whole
desktop.

> Undo and Redo
> 
> There has been some suggestion on the control center list that we might 
> like to include Undo/Redo or Revert buttons in the capplets[4], It would 
> be useful to get some input into the usability/accessibility 
> implications of such a feature.

Not needed, IMO. The changes are instantly shown, and if they're not,
the restarted capplet won't remember what you last changed, and won't be
able to undo it. And would "undo" revert the last change done in the
capplet, or since the capplet was started?

> Preference Windows
> 
> It would be useful to clarify the above points with regards to 
> "Preference Windows" in the HIG. The HIG specifies that preference 
> windows should be instant apply, but does not specify a particular 
> layout to deal with this idiom. Looking at any other operating systems 
> where instant apply is often used (primarily Mac OS X), it seems that 
> most preference windows do not have any Close button other than that 
> provided by the title bar.

Same as for the Close button above.

-- 
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>