Oke, let's start a tab consistency standart group. The purpose of the group is to define a standard tab behavior wich can be used in kde, mozilla and gnome. Because discussing with a lot of people doesn't work, I like to see two persons representing each project. Who likes to join the team and represent gnome? Is Calum Benson interested in this? I will also mail kde, mozilla and betterdesktop.
I can't find a mail adress of the betterdesktop team or Anna Dirks. Does anybody know how to contact them? - Erik Jan Quoting Jacob Beauregard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > This is one of the problems that faces the modern desktop computer that needs > to be approached. > > First of all, let me state this: Tabs are a list of different documents being > displayed in a single window. It is a form of navigation within an > application. People are becoming used to tabs. This makes list views that can > be more useful less learnable, as people have already learned how to use > tabs. It's something called familiarity. > > When a user makes the switch from a windowed-system like Microsoft's older > versions of Internet Explorer, the users wanted functionality that was > familiar to them. This included having a close button on every tab (as they > had had on every window). This not only makes the functionality much more > visible, which I find is the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of usability (keep this > drilled into your heads please), I don't have to move my mouse around so much > to close a tab. I also don't have a middle mouse button and find clicking > both mouse buttons simultaneously to be awkward (once again, familiarity). > > Still, considering there are differences that users have with the tabbed > interface, it is important to let it be flexible. This means the user should > be able to modify the appearance and behavior of a tabbed interface. Not only > does this make the interface more flexible, it gives the users more control > over their environment. While it is obvious that the GNOME community wouldn't > want to bombard the user with options for everything in one screen, this can > be controlled by grouping functions in a way that makes sense, not to lack > possible future innovation in the ways they are displayed. > > Being able to recover from doing something stupid is another usability > must-have. This means you should be able to easily recover from accidentally > hitting that close button on the tab. > > Consistency is another important feature of usability. In this sense, tabs > are > out because there are so many different implementations of them. What can be > done about this? Let's see... how about the GNOME developers, KDE developers, > and Firefox developers work together? Don't forget to include everyone else > that employs a tabbed interface. > > Still, everyone seems to be interested in tabs and that's where the most > usability advancements have been occurring. None of these improvements have > been occurring with any other type of interface that can be used to > accomplish the same tasks that a tab accomplishes. I would like to see some > improvement in that area. Just because some functionality isn't right for > some people doesn't mean that it doesn't work for a lot of people. Having a > functionality that can be useful and not using it is better than not having a > functionality at all. > > For instance, I'm building a LEGO MindStorms NXT robot for my HCI class with > someone. We're designing the interface top-down since we can't build the > final version of the robot yet. In our top-down design, we are including all > the functionality we might want to use even though it might not be used in > the final version. Still, we see that there could be some use for it in > approaching the problem of usability. Different people could build a robot > that performed the same task using some of the same base functionality that > we created but didn't end up using. That's pretty much the reason user > settings were created. We have this, and we find that it could be useful, so > use it if you want to. When you stray more from the kernel and into the > higher levels the flexibility/control concepts are less-utilized. At the > level of a window manager, GNOME should recognize that there is still a lot > of flexibility and control that can be implemented. > > An example of where a tab's usability-improvements could be useful, but not > necessary: I would like to be able to put min/max/close buttons on my window > list buttons. No desktop currently makes this directly available to me, > meaning I'm probably going to write it myself sometime in the near future. > > The same concepts that are used in tabs could be applied to any kind of lists > that can be used for the same purposes. This would also help the familiarity > level in a user that's using the interface. > > In other forms of consistency, it would be good to have a hierarchical > key-assignment manager. Something that could tell a program "Oh shit, that's > being used by on a lower level than you, inform the user and ask for a > different key!" I find key-assignment managers are quite limited these days. > I also hope someone copies Windows Vista's hierarchical volume controls, > although I know it will probably be done in the next year. > > On Tuesday 27 March 2007 04:57:24 pm Erik Jan Philippo wrote: > > Hey, > > > > It's very annoying that all the tab based application behave different. I > > think we should create a standard for tab behavior at freedesktop. The > > standard defines mouse and keyboard behavior. Several open source project > > should collaborate with each other. I suggest mozilla, kde, gnome and > > novells betterdesktop. The standard should be tested with usability tests > > (that's why i think betterdesktop.org is usefull). If the standard is > > defined we should ask as much as possible open source projects (if they use > > tabs) to implement it. Off course we provide them with the results of the > > usability research to convince them. If kde, gnome and mozilla agree with > > it, probable a lot of small programs will also use it. I hope this will > > lead to a very consistent tab behavior in every open source applications. > > Before I'm going to spend my time with it, I like to know what you think of > > it? > > > > Ubuntu is also planning tab consistency: > > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/tab-consistency > > > > There are some problems with this. Terminal use ctrl-shft-t while a lot of > > tab based programs use ctrl-t. The problem is that nano also use ctrl-t. I > > think there will be more complications like this. > > > > Greetings, > > > > Erik Jan > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Usability mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability > _______________________________________________ > Usability mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability > _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
