Re: [Usability] Control Center Appearance Capplet

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

On 18/04/07 18:47, Calum Benson wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-04-17 at 16:23 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:
>
> > Either that, or including the remaining options in the theme. For those 
> > on the "Options" tab it might make sense as some themes might want to 
> > specify if icons are shown in buttons for example. However, it obviously 
> > doesn't make much sense to add font hinting settings to the theme. How 
> > could we separate these in an obvious way though?
>
> Well, one argument might be that font rendering preferences really
> belong in a separate, OSX-like Displays capplet, where one defines
> screen resolution, multi-head layout (I wish!) and colour profiles (I
> wish!).  After all, if your desktop spans both a CRT and LCD display (as
> my laptop's often does), you'd ideally want a different rendering
> setting on each display anyway :)

Maybe we get some of these things with the new Xrandr? I haven't been 
following it too closely. The problem I can see here though, is that 
Display may not be an obvious place to look for when wanting to set font 
options.

> > > I don't think it's too hard to argue that metacity's "no maximise on
> > > dialogs" theory is somewhat flawed.  Any window that benefits from
> > > resizing should be maximisable IMHO, although some windows may require
> > > constraints other than "the full size of the screen".  E.g. in this
> > > particular case, you probably just want to maximise the window
> > > vertically (something for which we even have a keyboard shortcut,
> > > ironically), but not change the width at all.  OSX has the upper hand on
> > > us here with its zoom button, I guess.
>
> > I'm not sure. After all, what's the difference between a Dialog window 
> > and a Normal window? Presumably Dialog windows are asking for some kind 
> > of user input or action, hence their name. Any other window should be a 
> > Normal window. I don't see that Preference windows are really creating 
> > any sort of dialogue with the user.
>
> Well, I don't really think the distinction is important to the
> maximisation question-- if the window is made more useful by being
> resizable in one or both dimensions, we're failing by not allowing the
> user to do it. We have other visual cues available to us to make the
> distinction between different types of window, although the fewer types
> the better anyway as far as I'm concerned.  (Most users regard them all
> as 'just windows' anyway, although a taxonomy is certainly useful to us
> as designers.)

I think there is a useful distinction to be made, and I imagine many 
users see the difference between "normal application window" and "popup 
window" (i.e. dialog window).

I agree that we don't want to make a special kind of window just for 
preferences, but I think the preference windows at the moment confuse 
two styles by trying (visually at least) to be both at once. I'd really 
like preference windows to be just normal windows, with resize and 
maximise options as required, and without action buttons.

> > I'm not quite sure about this, as Metacity allows you to use key 
> > combinations to close the current window anyway. Perhaps someone can 
> > comment on whether this is still relevant.
>
> Well, IIRC, the sort of concerns raised at the time were:
>
> - Without the Close button, a blind user has to infer that the dialog is
> instant apply by the absence of any action buttons.  The presence of the
> Close button gives them a more positive indication.

I think this goes against what the Novell studies show, and what I 
suggested in the beginning. Does a Close button really indicate explicit 
apply? I would suggest that for the many people who don't realise the 
difference between Close and Cancel, it really only serves to confuse 
matters further.

> - For people with limited mobility in their hands, a key combination
> isn't necessarily as easy to input as hitting Tab a few times, then
> Space.  (Sticky keys can help out here of course, but the user may or
> may not be using that.)

Hmm, well I suppose there are at least two alternative key combinations. 
Alt+F4 and Alt+Space then C. As you suggest though, not quite as easy as 
Tab and Space or Enter. However, there is also the option of using the 
Escape key, which currently also closes the preference windows.

Regards,

Thomas