[Usability] inability to experiment

["Matthew Nuzum" <newz bearfruit org>]

There is a GNOME usability philosophy that I disagree with. When I
want to change a setting there is no easy or consistent way to undo my
change.

So for example, if I want to experiment with fonts in the Appearance
Preferences dialog I like how I can see the changes right away but if
I mess something up or want to compare a new setting to the old
setting there's no way. Once I make a change, that change is saved and
unless I'm careful to remember what the previous setting was I'm
stuck.

This is a philosophy carried throughout GNOME so there are a ton of
good examples:

 * Keyboard shortcuts - default for "launch web browser" is 0xb2 - if
you accidentally change this there's no easy way to get back to the
original
 * Keyboard preferences - you cannot undo changing the sliders.
 * Mouse preferences - if you change anything here your mouse will
*never* work the same again (I know, I've learned the hard way never
to touch this)

I remember reading somewhere how the developers of the date/time
applet (I think in Windows) never expected people to use it as a
general calendar for reference. Imagine if when you scrolled through
the calendar in GNOME to see what day of the week March 8th was that
it actually changed your clock's date?

I like that there's no pop-up confirmation - that would be annoying,
but it feels like changes should be atomic and that the user can
choose to revert at any time.

I would report this as a bug but the fact that it's so consistent
throughout the interface indicates to me that this was a conscious
design decision. I like the fact that the design principle is carried
out so consistently though. :-)
-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode