On 11 May 2009, at 19:29, John Leser wrote: > Calum, I agree all of these concerns are valid. Maybe I / we are > underestimating the difficulty of educating the user through the UI. > > I'd add that the idea of pushing people toward the Automatic NCP is > also partially motivated by the idea that the default behavior in > phase 1 is much better (esp. for multiple interfaces are available) > so less customization should be needed. > > My main concern for having people on the User NCP is that choosing > between the User and Auto NCP is supposed to represent a selection > of "less" or "more" automatic behavior. We're making this choices > on behalf of the user for an essentially unrelated reason. If there > were no distinction between the two NCPs other than one having read- > only contents, it would be much easier for me to embrace the User > NCP for migration. If that's the design, "Default" might be a > better name than "Automatic". But I think right now, there are some > difference in how new devices are handled that makes the Auto NCP > more automatic than the User one, in terms of the default activation > modes.
Well, the bottom line IMHO is that if you're going to make decisions for the user quietly behind the scenes, you pretty much have to get them right every time to avoid a loss of confidence in the technology. Especially when you're brave enough to call that technology something like "Auto-Magic" -- what could be less auto- magic than replacing a known, working networking configuration with a new, broken one? :) In that vein, a third option, I guess, might be a one-time dialog at first login for all upgrading users... whilst foisting a dialog on all those people isn't an especially pleasing solution either, it would at least put them in control of their own destiny. You'd want to do it in such a way as to encourage most people to pick Automatic, while still pointing out why they might want to pick Manual... maybe something along the lines of: +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | *Network Configuration Upgrade* | | | | Choose a network profile: | | | | (o) Automatic (recommended): detect and configure | | network devices automatically | | | | ( ) Manual: preserve existing network configuration, for | | advanced users only | | | | This dialog will not be shown again, but you can also switch | | profiles later in the Administration > Network dialog. | | | | [Close] | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ That said, I'd still like to think we could find some way to tell when Automatic wasn't going to work, and upgrade them to the User profile instead in those situations. That's just what the user is going to have to do themselves anyway, and we're supposed to be making their lives easier... Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:calum.benson at sun.com OpenSolaris Desktop Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems
