Re: [Usability] Gnome usability question regarding preference dialog

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 09:20 -0600, Matthew Nuzum wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 5:04 AM, Andreas Nilsson <nisses mail home se> wrote:
> > Hi Anirudh!
> > I'm not sure how a Apply-button would help you more than instant-apply in
> > that situation.
> > With instant apply:
> > 1. Click a checkbox.
> > 2. See the change happen.
> > 3. Figure out that "oh, wait, I don't want that".
> > 4. Click the checkbox again to unselect the option.
> > 5. Close the window.
> >
> > Without instant apply:
> > 1, Click a checkbox.
> > 2. Press the apply button.
> > 3. See the change happen.
> > 4. Figure out that "oh, wait, I don't want that".
> > 5. Click the checkbox again to unselect the option.
> > 6. Press the apply button.
> > 7. Close the window.
> 
> How about a slider where you may not have observed the precise value
> before? How about a select menu where the user is not familiar with
> the options in the menu and just wants to experiment, or a list full
> of fonts, many with similar names? How about a password field where
> you can't see the value (like the wifi encryption key)?
> 
> Have you ever clicked something on accident? I have. For example,
> while moving the mouse have my hand slip and accidentally click or
> drag. It's especially easy on trackpads that have a "tap to click"
> option. "... oops, what did I just click?"
> 
> What if you want to compare a set of new changes to the old way? For
> example something takes 4 preference changes to try out. You can then
> just hit cancel to instantly go back to the way it was before to get a
> before/after effect.

While all of these cases indeed suck, the point was that they
don't suck any less with Apply/Cancel.  In a typical dialog
without instant apply, Cancel does nothing after you've hit
Apply.  So you make changes to some slider or text field or
something else where you don't remember the original setting,
then you click Apply to test your settings.  You're now stuck
in the exact same situation as if you'd had instant apply.

Apply/Cancel isn't a solution to anything.  Three possible
solutions are:

 * Undo - change the last control you changed to what it
   was before you changed it.
 * Revert - change all controls to what they were when you
    first opened the dialog.
 * Restore Defaults - change all controls to system defaults.

These are in decreasing order of usefulness to the user, and
in decreasing order of implementation difficulty.  More useful
things are harder to do.

Personally, I think Revert is probably sufficient for most
users, and could be implemented in a way that makes it easy
for application programmers.  I can think of two ways:

 1) Make GTK+ scan and store the values of all controls in
    a dialog when it's shown.  Then provide a function to
    revert them all.
 2) Add transaction support to GConf, or whatever mythical
    system might replace GConf.  Changes are live, but you
    can roll them back.

Things to chew on.

--
Shaun