Oliver has asked me to comment on the UI for the new screensaver
settings. I have several suggestions, but I do not think any of them
should block this code being introduced to Ubuntu, because it implements
such an important missing feature without critical problems. (I
understand that other things may hold it up, such as Edubuntu not having
room to include Mono.) Furthermore, some of these suggestions are
problems with gnome-screensaver already, not with the rewrite in
particular.
* "xFX Screensaver Settings" should be "Screensaver". ("xFX" is, alas,
inappropriate branding. "Settings" is probably redundant, because there
is no other "Screensaver" window.)
* When using control A can (or should) disable control B, A should be
above B, to prevent people from wasting time twiddling things that end
up inapplicable. Here, "Activate the screensaver when the computer is
idle" determines whether *any* of the other controls are relevant, so it
should go at the top, not near the bottom.
* "Regard the computer as idle after:" violates Ockham's UI Razor in
that it needlessly introduces a new entity: something mysterious that
does "regarding" of idle state. This can be avoided by merging with the
"Activate the screensaver" checkbox:
[/] When the computer has been idle for: [10 minutes :^]
The menu would be disabled when the checkbox was unchecked. (Using a
menu like this, instead of a slider, would require offering a selection
of likely values.)
* The rewrite says "10" without saying what the units are. This can be
fixed by implementing the previous suggestion (or by adding units to the
live slider value).
* I suggest pulling "Blank screen" and "Random" out of the list of
screensavers. Instead have a separate "Show:" menu, immediately under
the menu I suggested above, with three options: "Blank screen", "One
screensaver", and "Randomly-chosen screensaver". When "Blank screen" is
chosen, the list of screensavers (and the "Properties" button) is
disabled; when "One screensaver" is chosen, the list behaves as normal;
and when "Random screensaver" is chosen, each screensaver in the list
begins with a checkbox for determining whether it is part of the random
selection.
* "Properties" should be "Options...", and "Name Of Screensaver Here
Properties" should be "Name Of Screensaver Here Options". (Everywhere
except Microsoft and Windows software, "properties" are things that
might or might not be changeable, making it a needlessly vague term when
referring solely to things that *are* changeable.)
* In the options window, the name of the screensaver should be displayed
only once (in the title bar), not twice. (This also means removing the
separator. Actually, both separators should go.)
* In the options window, the various options should have 6 pixels
between them, both horizontally and vertically.
* When an option is represented by a slider, its label should be
followed by a colon. For example, "Display Speed" should be "Display
Speed:". (Actually, it should be "Display speed:" in sentence case, but
if you're auto-generating the options GUI there's probably little you
can do about that.)
* It's not clear what the "Description" button does.
* "Fullscreen" is not obvious -- people may wonder, why *wouldn't* they
want their screensaver to be full-screen? This button probably should
say "Test" instead.
* "Power Management" would be better as "Power Settings...". (Hardly
anyone "manages" power, except people who work at power companies.)
Thank you for working on this!
--
no 'Settings' button in gnome-screensaver
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/22007
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