On 31/05/06, Chi Shang Cheng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Grouping all progress dialogs in one panel doesn't > make sense. When place several items together, Gestalt > psychology states that people will tend to perceive these items as related. > However, placing all progress dialogs (or similar dialogs) in one central > place has no meaning for the user, since all those items in that place share > no semantic relationship. The items in that central progress dialog do have > a relationship, but it's merely a technical one, namely that all those > windows are progress windows. Since the items in such a panel share no > semantic relationship, but a technical relationship instead, will the user > have enough knowledge to know where to find the dialogs? User testing would > be needed to find out the answer to that question.
I agree. In fact, the less popups the window has, the less confusing is the interface. Splitting some information - such as a progress bar - and carrying it somewhere else just because it is a popup does not make sense. That mockup is pretty much oriented to a "functionality centered desktop" (like SymphonyOS, with boxes here and there for applications, bookmarks, recent files and why not progress bars), rather to a "document/task centered desktop" (Like MacOS or KDE, where a single window represents a task -browsing files- or a document -audio file(s), text or webpage-). Honestly, I do not know which paradigm is more intuitive. What I know is that it is not a good idea is mixing both of them. If your paradigm is "task related", you expect all the subtasks of your current task being grouped, either in a window or using any other concept. And when some subtask requires an special representation (i.e.: a popup window or a "save, discard" dialogue) it should be clearly related to the main representation of your task. Sending the progress bar to some section in the desktop establish no relation between the task and the progress information. And what's more: desktop is not always visible. > that you could use to present information to the user. Besides this > disadvantage, it does has an advantage: shrinking such a window will force > the developer to eliminate all unessential information, which will result in > a much more clean interface. Great advantage, would be that. Interfaces could be cleared up a little without shrinking the windows, thought. -- Francisco JoaquÃn RodrÃguez Prados Fachbereich Informatik, Fachhochschule Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] JID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Appeal mailing list [email protected] https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/appeal
