Jason Craig wrote: > Now I finally feel like participating in this thread... > > Stefan Hundhammer wrote: >> We identified a number of problems with that old control center: >> >> (1) There are too many icons in there - way more that can easily be >> navigated. >> >> (2) The groups don't always match users' expectations. >> (E.g., is firewall more related to security or to network?) >> > I think that the best solution to these three problems are a tree > structure. People (here and in the card sort study) have expressed > confusion over why a network device is not hardware. Easy fix, you can > keep network devices as a node, just move it under hardware.
It's not a tree. It's people's fixation on trees that makes large menu systems difficult to use. A better solution is a *lattice*. There can be more than one route to a particular action. To illustrate with the network card example, if they follow your suggestion and move it under hardware in a tree, there will immediately be objections - "why isn't a network device listed under networking?" - and those objections are perfectly reasonable in my view. A networking device is *both* a hardware device and a networking component. A keyboard is a hardware device, part of the locale, and part of the X window system. It should be possible to reach actions that affect it via any route. It's easy to reduce icon clutter - don't display them! Apart from some things like keyboards and mice where a pictorial representation is natural, icons add little value. What's the natural picture of a web server or a dns server? How do you clearly differentiate all the components of the graphical display system? Answer - text. Just my 2p worth. Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
