Re: [Usability] Display file notes easily
hello On Sat, 2007-06-16 at 15:31 +0200, Amaury Chamayou wrote: Hello, I found myself using the ability of adding notes to files trough Nautilus to give some meaning to files that had otherwise non-descriptive filenames (because they had to be easily accessible from a program but that's not the point), and I thought it would be very nice if Nautilus could display at least the first few words of a note below the filename, just like it can do with the date, or permissions etc. Should I post this to the Nautilus ml straight away or does anyone have comments about it, how they find it use[ful | less], or even any additions ? sounds nice. Maybe this can be added as a tooltip ? Really bad mockup http://www.flickr.com/photos/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/559637955/ Amaury ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- Ritesh Khadgaray ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919970164885 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] Gnome taskbar grouping annoyance
On Sun, 2007-06-10 at 03:44 -0700, Wilson Wang wrote: I have an old LCD screen which can only display 1024x768 pixel size. So I set the option always grouping for the taskbar, as Windows does by default. After using this feature, I found that I had difficulties of finding programs on the taskbar. I realized that this problem was caused by the random postioning of the programs on the taskbar. I hope that developers here can tackle this issue. there is a patch/or a bugzilla to sort the task list http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52225 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=302398 . -Wilson ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- Ritesh Khadgaray ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919970164885 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] Control Center Appearance Capplet
On Tue, 2007-04-17 at 16:05 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote: On 04/16/2007 03:56 PM, Thorsten Wilms wrote: On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 02:57:31PM +0100, Thomas Wood wrote: http://live.gnome.org/ControlCenter/AppearanceSettings Theme selection doesn't affect Fonts, Desktop and Options, right? There should be some seperation between Themes and Appearance, then. Yes, it can affect Fonts and the Desktop background. However, I have wondered if theme should be in a separate window, but that may be even worse than having settings affected in different tabs of the same window. this reminds me rant Would it be possible to add maximize button to theme window, which would maximize the window vertically only or atleast remember the maximization state between sessions . I have a huge collection of wallpapers and control themes. /rant -Thomas ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- Ritesh Khadgaray ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919970164885 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] User Shut Down damaged PC
. The addition of the Shut Down option in the menus is fairly recent. Maybe a year ago it was added to the user environment. Prior to that it only appeared in the gdm login screen. I'd like to see an option to return to that model. Personal observation: I personally cannot see why *anyone* needs a shut down option within their desktop. Linux is not Windows. It is fully multi-tasking and multi-user. At a minimum I'd prefer users have to completely log out and then at a minimum *consciously* decide to shut the machine down from gdm. I'd also like to see Gnome or gdm do, at a minimum, what Windows does which is warn that other users are logged on before the final shut down sequences can start. Note that this isn't only a problem for little kids. My wife's machines servers as a MythTV backend server. Periodically sh will make a mistake when logging out and choose shut down. The machine shuts down and we lose recordings. Granted, she should be able to read the message saying that the machine will shut down in 60 seconds, but sometimes she will do this trying to get out the door to work when she's rushed and not paying as much attention. As a small note toward usability both my wife and son have rearranged their desktop to move what I think Gnome calls the 'panel' to the top of the screen. For some reason they feel they are less likely to choose the shut down option when their screens are arranged this way. Personally I don't like that arrangement but to each his own. Anyway, we are all Gnome users and love the environment. It strikes a nice balance between features usability while keeping from terribly overtaxing the system. I use Gnome with real-time kernels for audio recording. 4 years ago I could never have done that and was using minimalist environments like fluxbox. I like that I can now use Gnome and not suffer in the least. Lastly, I'm not looking for any immediate changes in Gnome. I just thought I'd report this after maybe our 10th, and worst, run in with the issue. Cheers, Mark On 3/21/07, Manu Cornet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Mark! Thank you for your feedback. I think the problem you raise is real, however I believe the need to solve the how to fix a broken system problem is not as urgent as the need to not break it in the first place. The simplest way I see is to be able to warn the user against shutting down/rebooting whenever a system upgrade is being performed. I'm not sure whether this needs to be distro specific or not (there are many ways to upgrade a system in the various distros), but the upgrade system should probably let gnome-session know about what it is doing? Cheers, Manu ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- Ritesh Khadgaray ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919970164885 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] Mac-style menubar in GNOME
On Wed, 2006-09-13 at 00:40 +0200, BJörn Lindqvist wrote: I'm working on a simple panel applet that would provide functionality similar to Mac's menu bar. Adding the applet would cause most menu bars to automagically disappear from their respective windows and migrate into the applet's area. Removing the applet would restore menubars to their parent windows. If you do it, you will be my god. Lead me to the code, Oh Master. Obvious and contrived implementation issues aside, I would like to probe the list for any and all comments on the potential usability of such an applet (and analogously its potential testing user base). You could start a religion. All hail Zoran ;) -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] spatial desktop
On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 02:30 +0300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: On Aug 23, 2006, at 4:50 PM, Ritesh Khadgaray wrote: ... random thoughts from my mind Totem is a video player, and can be made spatial - remember window position, time, state ( play/pause...) . None of those are anything to do with a spatial interface; they're just good manners. (Except the part about automatically resuming playback, It would be preferable to remember time in a video file, as i often have tons of video tutorial which i watch in bits and pieces as i often have to cross-reference. totem to my current knowledge use a single window for all video, hence i end up using mplayer + totem combo. /me i might be unique in this regard. which is probably inappropriate if Totem starts when you log in.) gnome has a option for save session , which should be a good fit for this. A spatial interface is about finding things based on where they are. Having items stay where you left them is an important part of this, but only one part. Another is having each item appear only in one place, unless obviously advertised as a shortcut (for example, search folders should look very different from normal folders). Another is for different objects to look different from each other (for example, different documents should not have the same icon). Another is for the I tend to use different emblems, for certain documents and folder. Changing the icon confuses me a bit, about the document type. number of things you are navigating to be small enough or the display to be sophisticated enough (which is why spatial interfaces are popular in VR worlds, and why a spatial interface is good for folders with few items but poor for large things like music collections). Agreed, certain application work better without spatial metaphor clutter. So whether a spatial interface is appropriate depends on the application. An interesting juxtaposition of the two is in Aperture, which uses a non-spatial interface for a photographer's overall library, and a spatial interface for groups of photos. http://urlx.org/apple.com/20b5d Image viewer can have a spatial mode ( a gconf key ? to remember this ) What would that do? Documents viewer ( pdf ) can remember there setting per document basis. Text editor - already have an example. Additionally, we can associate an application to a particular document only ( not document type ) ... Those should happen anyway, and they aren't really anything to do with a spatial interface either. rather than each application having a spatial mode option, why not use a common setting in gconf /desktop/gnome/interface/spatial Cheers -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] spatial desktop
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 17:25 +0100, Joachim Noreiko wrote: Ritesh Khadgaray wrote: Hey, Out of curiosity, Why is nautilus spatial and the rest of desktop not ? (Sorry, lost the original post...) way better helpful than google. /me lost my google mojo. Perhaps the following features would define a spatial app: 1. moving the file in the file manager doesn't disturb the app it's open in why not have a central repo for document specific data, rather than each application as nautilus or scribes/scratchpad using a app specific database. ~/.spatial/doc-hash my argument is, if i/gnome were to say switch between scribes or scratchpad, or for that matter sticky-notes or tomboy document would not lose there properties such as position on desktop. 2. renaming the file in the file manager causes the app to update its title bar accordingly sounds perfect. 3. you can save a new document by dragging it from the app to the file manager mod up. I know there's been talk of 3, and I've seen mockups. 1 and 2 would strengthen the link between the object in the file manager and the document window. ___ Does your mail provider give you FREE antivirus protection? Get Yahoo! Mail http://uk.mail.yahoo.com -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] spatial desktop
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 10:29 -0400, Mystilleef wrote: By the way, Scribes is another spatial text editor for GNOME, and yes, I am a developer. :-) http://scribes.sourceforge.net/ dang ! checked out http://gnomefiles.org/app.php/Scribes no wonder, i missed this when i looked for spatial editor. Cheers On 8/22/06, Ritesh Khadgaray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey, Out of curiosity, Why is nautilus spatial and the rest of desktop not ? On a sidenote, scratchpad ( http://dborg.wordpress.com/ ) is a spatial text editor. No, i'am not a developer or contributor, only a user. -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] spatial desktop
On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 19:11 +0200, Daniel Borgmann wrote: Hello, On 8/22/06, Calum Benson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To be honest, I'm also not clear what 'spatial' means for other applications anyway. E.g. Daniel Borgmann writes about your scratchpad example: In true spatial philosophy, it is not possible to create a new document from inside a scratchpad window, instead you will have to create a new document using your file manager and then open it. which I'd say, in itself at least, isn't much to do with spatial UIs (and as an aside, it would probably drive me mad!) Without having used it, it sounds to me more like it's just a document-driven rather than an application-driven UI, which always sounds like a great idea until you try to design a whole desktop around it :) What spatial means to me can basically be summed up as object oriented. It means that each window of the application represents a unique object with persistent (spatial-) state. This can be an application object, a document object, a project object or something else. The current release of Scratchpad is purely document oriented indeed, for the next release (and this was my initial plan as well), I'm working on the project oriented interface which will be used when Scratchpad is launched independently. I have written some details about it[1] on my blog and would very much like to hear usability related critique about this plan. sounds interesting. waiting for release :P The reason why I don't allow new documents from within a document window is more related to the spatial interface than part of it. The point is that it's not possible to have a direct window-object mapping, when the object doesn't even exist yet. I could offer a new document interface that would require the name and location of the document beforehand, but that appeared like a rather crude method to me compared to using the file manager directly. Scratchpad has an Open Folder option to access the document's folder, so it flows nicely. I doubt that it would drive you mad. :-) In general, I don't think spatial interfaces are the right choice for every application yet (my chess viewer doesn't use a spatial interface agreed. for example), but I strongly believe that it (or rather object orientation in general) is a worthwhile idea to pursue, mainly because it makes interfaces more consistent and their behaviour more reliable. It's just important to remember that object orientation doesn't have to mean document orientation and that a document UI isn't always the best choice. Then maybe most of the obligatory flaming about this topic could be avoided. i was reading through http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero hence, a flicker of idea with regard to data oriented desktop. on a side-note, what i understood is people care about there documents/data and not about which application they use. Daniel [1] http://dborg.wordpress.com/2006/03/25/what-the-f-is-scratchpad/ -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] spatial desktop
On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 15:42 +0200, Steve Frécinaux wrote: Ritesh Khadgaray wrote: Those should happen anyway, and they aren't really anything to do with a spatial interface either. rather than each application having a spatial mode option, why not use a common setting in gconf /desktop/gnome/interface/spatial Because it would cause pain. Currently, GNOME has desktop-wide settings for things like labels on toolbars and so on. But those are minor changes in the UI, and it's perfectly correct to define them desktop-wide (most applications provide their own setting for it, to make it possible to overwrite the desktop setting, too) But spatial is another matter. Changing from non-spatial to spatial involves big UI changes (just look at nautilus as an example), and someone using a spatial desktop could as well want to keep a classical view for some apps. And depending on the context it might be more useful to have MDI instead of spatial things. It's really on an application basis. which means, if at any point of time gnome desktop goes completely spatial i would have to manually enable spatial feature for all application ? why not add a setting for global preference, which applications can override ? ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] spatial desktop
On Tue, 2006-08-22 at 13:40 +0100, Calum Benson wrote: On Tue, 2006-08-22 at 09:49 +0530, Ritesh Khadgaray wrote: Hey, Out of curiosity, Why is nautilus spatial and the rest of desktop not ? I think the reason is simply, we had to start somewhere :) And enough people have expressed some dissatisfaction with the nautilus spatial implementation that we'd want to consider similar changes in any other applications pretty carefully. Have one switch enable spatial desktop rather than individual application having this setting. To be honest, I'm also not clear what 'spatial' means for other applications anyway. E.g. Daniel Borgmann writes about your scratchpad Same here, still trying to learn about this. example: In true spatial philosophy, it is not possible to create a new document from inside a scratchpad window, instead you will have to create a new document using your file manager and then open it. which I'd say, in itself at least, isn't much to do with spatial UIs (and as an aside, it would probably drive me mad!) Without having used it, it sounds to me more like it's just a document-driven rather than an application-driven UI, which always sounds like a great idea until you try to design a whole desktop around it :) random thoughts from my mind Totem is a video player, and can be made spatial - remember window position, time, state ( play/pause...) . Image viewer can have a spatial mode ( a gconf key ? to remember this ) Documents viewer ( pdf ) can remember there setting per document basis . Text editor - already have an example. Additionally, we can associate an application to a particular document only ( not document type ) Cheeri, Calum. -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
[Usability] spatial desktop
Hey, Out of curiosity, Why is nautilus spatial and the rest of desktop not ? On a sidenote, scratchpad ( http://dborg.wordpress.com/ ) is a spatial text editor. No, i'am not a developer or contributor, only a user. -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] Using Control-Esc and Windows keys to access the start menu
On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 20:29 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote: On Sun, 20 Aug 2006, Lennart Borgman wrote: Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:00:31 +0200 From: Lennart Borgman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Usability@gnome.org Subject: [Usability] Using Control-Esc and Windows keys to access the start menu Hi, I am new to this list. I have subscribed mainly because I want to become a GNU/Linux user. (Gnome runs on FreeBSD and Solaris and many others too. I want to be a Gnome user.) Now I installed Ubuntu. Quite nice installation as far as I know. However when the installation was finished I was not able to do anything. I had no mouse at all on that computer. Ubuntu does make some customisations beyond stock Gnome so do keep that in mind. I am very displeased at how they removed the Run Dialog (they hid it away making it totally undiscoverable but if you are lucky enough to arleady know Alt+F2 it is still available). afaik, gnome removed run dialog during there over-simplification process. aargh :( I tried Control-Esc and the Windows keys to access the start menu, If I recall correctly this used to work when Gnome had the old layout more like windows with a main/start menu in the bottom left corner. Novell is one of the few distributions to go back to this kind of layouts and I would hope they got the keybinding right too but you would need to try yourself to be sure. (I tried adding back the main menu applet to the lower panel on Ubuntu but Ctrl+Esc doesn't work.) but none of them worked. I would really appreciate if they do. Is there any reason that they should not work the same way as on MS Windows? Would not that attract MS Windows users? In ubuntu if you go to System, Preferences, Keyboard shortcuts you can reassign the shortcut for the Application menu to be Ctrl+Escape or the the Super key (aka Windows Key). I was not able to add the menu menu applet and assign the keybinding to it instead. There are all kinds of things we could do the same and I personally prefer it when developers embrace and extend and can confidently say they are doing the same or better, not just different. Rather than get into it too much I use the level of disagreement in this very discussion to show you how difficult it is to build conscensus on an issue. Also there is the fundamental problem that we must design Gnome so that it can be used on keyboard that do not have a Super key. (Granted you did also mention Ctrl+Esc.) PS: This is my second try with GNU/Linux. The last time I backed off for exactly the same reason. Things are going to be different, and some have argued that trying too hard to copy windows only makes the differences more painfully obvious. Sometimes it is better for Gnome to be interntally consistent and predictable within itself rather than copying. However if enough people wanted to we could probably have it both ways and make it easier to do what you want. Well, and that the dual boot that came with Ubuntu trashed my MS Windows partition. Backups are the only answer, depending on your circumstances either Ubuntu or Windows could have been the problem. I also had to learn the hard way how easy it is to shoot onself in the foot with partition tools and more. I would strongly advise you to try out VMWare Player, by far the safest way I can think of to try distribtions like Ubuntu. In particular there is one VMWare image I really like which allows you to try out Live CD based distributions without needing to burn them to a CD. This allows me to try out many more distributions beyond those especially packages for VMware. Sincerely Alan Horkan Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
Re: [Usability] Request for UI ideas: User/Group management
On Thu, 2006-07-20 at 21:30 +0200, sam wrote: Hi, I am trying to desig a GUI for assigning permissions to specific groups of users. The GUI must make it possible to design a user/group hierarchy like this: -- [Everyone] \ |- [Administrators] |\- Samuel |- [Editors] ||- Sarah |\- Harry \- [Normal Users] |- Anonymous George |- Anonymous Jane \- [Friends] |- Cathy |- Jens \- Stefan -- (I enclosed the group names in brackets, the Everyone group is mandatory) i always thought of this as a grid group user usr1 usr2 usr3 ... grp1 x grp2 x x grp3 x ... Note that the following must be possible: - Storing a user in multiple groups - Storing a group in any another group, at infinite depth. The permissions are assigned to groups or users, using inheritance from one group to another. So collisions are possible in theory (what if a user is in a group that permits access to an object and also in a group that denies permission to the same object), but will be avoided by reporting them to the user when he tries to create such a situation. I was trying to avoid using a tree view, but so far my ideas are few. I thought of using something like a tag system as opposed to a group system, but that makes the inheritance idea non-intuitive. Any ideas for a GUI? Thanks, -Samuel ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
