On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, Sven Jaborek wrote: > Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:30:24 +0200 > From: Sven Jaborek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Usability] Hiding options from users? > > Hi list, > > what usability philosphie is this?
"Try stuff without testing it thorougly because it was impossible to get peopel to agree on anything" philosophy. ;) Essentially there was a new better API and a new file chooser was needed too. There were many suggestions presented some of which were conflicting (repeated suggestions about getting rid of the file chooser entirely were particularly unhelpful). I think a lot of interesting ideas were tried some of which worked and others which didn't. That the new file chooser did poorly at some of the tasks the old file chooser did well also hurt acceptance. Software developement is not Rocket Science and in Open Source it is better to get something done and improve it later than waiting for perfection which may never arrive. Eventually decisions had to be made and the developers were right to do so. Various improvements have been made since and I hope and expect more will be made and maybe someone will carry out the random threats of a desktop wide standard file chooser (unlikely but not impossible). The new API made it possible for others to write their own file choosers while still following the standard API which is something I believe hardly anyone has done with the exception of GPE (Gnome Palmtop Enviroment). > The file-open dialog shows a text-field by pressing ctrl-l, without a > button or menu that would make it possible to open it if you dont know. > Since lots of people, like me, will miss the text-box when they see the > new dialog, it should not such a secret. For various reasons which I have explained before (and it is all too easily to point out in hindsigh) I'm firmly of the belief we got some things backwards and an approach more like Mac OS would have been better. (The simple first dialog it presents is more like the Location entry, giving power and flexibility to those who might need it for accessibility reasons and encouraging everyone else to use the file manager or drag and drop to open things). Sincerely Alan Horkan Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
