On 25 Oct, 2005, at 4:59 AM, Simon Howard wrote:
... I was wondering if anyone had looked at the "Users and Groups" dialog in GNOME System Tools with a view to improving its usability.
Yes, it's been a peeve of mine for a while. I think the existence of gnome-about-me is a symptom of flawed design in Users and Groups.
The main thing that bugs me about this dialog is the excessive amount of detail given in the user list. At the very least, the home directory and shell should not be shown in the list - in the properties dialog these are even listed under "Advanced Settings"!
Agreed -- many, if not most, people won't even use a shell.
I'm tempted to say that the UID should be removed as well but maybe there's a case for it.
One person might have multiple accounts, so they would need to distinguish them by name. (That's also one of the reasons using the word "user" is a bad idea: for people with multiple accounts, it's a synecdoche.)
The search box is useful but rather complicated to use. You have to specify whether you want to search on User name, User ID, Group name or User GID. How about removing the dropdown list and simply making the list reduce to any users which match any of those conditions? ...
Another good idea. Now find someone to implement it. :-) -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
