[Usability] HIG v3 Update

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hello!

An update on the new version of the HIG...

We had a good BoF on the topic of new HIG at GUADEC, and me, Calum and
mpt started drafting some patterns. If you're interested in what the new
HIG will look like, I've written a report on my blog [1]. You can also
find the *draft* material here [2].

It's early days and there's lots to do, so please get in touch if you
want do some work on this. We need help with:

 * Writing patterns
 * Editing and proofing
 * Porting existing guidelines to the new format

See the aforementioned draft patterns page [2] for more info.

There are also a few issues relating to the new HIG which would benefit
from discussion:

* Format and hosting

Should the new HIG be hosted on the wiki, on a dedicated web-site, or in
a format that can be stored locally? We talked about integrating it into
Glade (or a new super-fancy Glade-like tool) at the BoF. That would be
cool, but it'd need some developers to step up if it were to happen. ;)
In the absence of this, I was wondering whether some kind of CMS would
do the trick. It would be quick to set up, allow us to have discussion
threads hanging off each pattern, and people could subscribe to the site
to get updates when new patterns are added.

* The pattern template

The pattern template can be found here [3]. It's still in draft form and
I think the plan is to develop it as we get further into the writing
process. Some points about the template were raised at the BoF and
Calum's added them to the template. Has anybody got anything else to
add? Calum explained that the User Guidelines section is primarily for
the benefit of documentation writers. Do any docs people have a view on
this? Would they like to help write these sections?

* Design decisions

There are going to be some new design proposals made as part of the new
HIG. I'm planning to report on these in the future - it would be nice to
have some discussion around them. It could also be good to do some kind
of high level review, but that's a little way off.

 * Highlighting important points

mpt pointed out that it would be good to highlight those parts of the
new HIG that deviate from:

 a) the current version, or
 b) what other OSs do

Can we have some standard icons or expressions to delineate these? I was
wondering about using dialog-question for the OS specific points and
emblem-important for HIG changes. Opinions?

That's it! :)

Allan

[1] http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/hig-v3/
[2] http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject/HIG3
[3] http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject/HIG3/PatternTemplate
--
IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org