Hi David, I understand from Rom that at the next major release, BOINC Manager's simple view will get an overhaul. Perhaps that before that time you can already add/subtract a couple of things.
I've always found it strange that when in Simple view, there's a button in plain view that allows people to go to Advanced view. Yet once in Advanced view, going back to Simple view takes a lot of looking through menus and tabs. In my opinion, this should be the other way around. If you do not want people to go astray and wander into Advanced view before they're ready for it, then don't offer them the possibility so easily. Yet while when they are in Advanced view, do offer them a one click solution to go back to (perhaps their more familiar) Simple view. That way you can make Simple view really simple. It'll show what tasks are being worked on, it'll have the Notices opening in a separate window, they can click to see graphics, they even have some rudimentary preferences to override web-preferences with (*). Hide the option to go to Advanced view from sight, though. Put it in a menu or perhaps better, under the CTRL + Shift + V (**) key-combo. But don't put it next to the other options in plain sight. Then in Advanced view you can have the Notices tab and the Messages tab, along with the other tabs. Don't hide the method to go back to simple view in a menu, but just make that a button in the left lower corner of the manager. There's space enough anyway. By keeping things more or less in the same place you're not alienating a lot of your current (average/advanced/experienced) user base. The same on that with options that move around a lot. It's very difficult for those of us who make manuals, or FAQs or other documentation to explain to people where things are when every so many new BOINC versions they change places or get a different name or description. E.g. What was wrong with having the Computing Preferences (Or Advanced Preferences as I'd like to call them) under the Advanced menu? What's even wrong with having an Advanced menu under the Advanced view? Everything here is for Advanced people, isn't it? There's no advantage to hiding the messages in a menu in the advanced view, if you make it difficult enough for newcomers not to stray into the advanced view and get scared about what they see there, because they haven't had the chance yet to get accustomed to what the software does, or read the manual. That is, if we ever get a chance to make one that will show people where things are going from 5.10 through the whole 6 range to whatever is next, without making it very difficult for them to figure out what we mean. (*) local simple preferences should only show those in the global_prefs_override.xml file. local advanced preferences should show all those in the global_prefs_override.xml file. But since either of them only override **the same** preferences as are chosen on the web-site, the preferences that aren't overridden don't need to be written to the global_prefs_override.xml file, which they are now. These can be read from the global_preferences.xml file. (**) CTRL + Shift + V = Simple View from Advanced view, CTRL + Shift + A = Advanced view from Simple view. Shouldn't that be one key-combo only, so people can easier switch to and fro? Both CTRL + Shift + V, for instance, then depending on what view you're in you switch just to the other? -- -- Jord. _______________________________________________ boinc_dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ssl.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/boinc_dev To unsubscribe, visit the above URL and (near bottom of page) enter your email address.
