Re: [Usability] A file information preview system in Nautilus

["Long Gao" <imgaolong gmail com>]

But there do have many scenes that a user might need a faster tooltip. We might enumerate some of them

1) It is faster than using a properties window of a file.  Users might only need to know a few attributes of a file, but opening a properties window by right clicking a file and find what you need in all the tabs is much like a wasting-time job. On the contrary, a user can custom what you want to see most quickly by editing the gconf, and see it in the tooltips within one or two seconds, such as notes, size of dir contents, etc. That could improve the users' experiences.

2) It is faster than opening a big external application. Often, people only want to identify what a file really is by using a file browser, or check whether the file is the right one before opening it with a very big and very slow application. Tooltip preview of image, sound, and movie files could provide a very fast way of doing that.

And I think there might be more scenes that a user want a tooltip, and he indeed need a tooltip.

2008/6/5 Calum Benson <Calum Benson sun com>:

On 5 Jun 2008, at 01:36, Long Gao wrote:

Except all the points against tooltips, there are value of tooltips, isn't it? Or there won't be a bug report requesting it from four years ago, will it?

I've no doubt that some users would find tooltips useful some of the time, and there are probably even more users who think they would.

However, most UI designers also know from experience that what users think they want, and what they actually need, aren't always the same thing :) [1]

So as always, it's important to enumerate the tasks, their frequency, the context in which they will be performed and by whom, before deciding what the best solution might be.

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] Similarly, what users say they do with your application, and what they actually do, aren't always the same thing-- so the only reliable way to find out is to observe them (whilst trying to minimise observer effects, like the Hawthorne Effect...)

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
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Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems