GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 113285
Are the cache prefs necessary?
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Preference extermination tour 2003 :) But in all seriousness are the cache comparing prefs necessary? and if so why? When would a user not want to use automatic cache updating? If these prefs are necessary, please do not close this bug, but instead include a description of why and move the component to help, so i have a reference when writing docs.
So Xan and I spent the afternoon on IRC trying to figure out why anyone would ever not want to use automatic here, and couldn't come up with anything. HP do you have any insight as to why you would set these cache comparing preferences to anything but Automatic.
I must say I'm not the more clued person of the world about this. I'd guess one would disable cache when using a local network connection or a very fast connection. At least that's the reason I heard sometimes.
Beats me. If "automatically" is reliable, I see no reason you wouldn't want it. Maybe some web servers lie about whether the page changed or something.
Worth noting that safari does not have these prefs (nor does it have the crack color prefs :) )
I think we can reduce the possibly useful preferences to: Enable cache Clear cache Clear seem sort of necessary, maybe we should s/Security/Privacy and put it there though (if Enable is found not useful). It seem more appropriate to the task from an user point of view (unless there are other use of it that I'm missing). About enable I dunno, maybe it's worth a mail to the list to see the possible user cases of it.
let me just be clear i'm not proposing to remove the disk cache: or memory cache: prefs, xan and i did come up with some situations we're these would be useful. Basically in a university setting a sysadmin might want to set these to a specific size for all users based on the amount of personal space each user is given. Although that begs the question should these even be in the ui? But on the other hand i'm really not a fan of hidden prefs. So yeah i'm only refering to the compare cache prefs :) Maybe providing a way to disable the cache would be useful, I'm not sure i guess. If we do that we should take in to consideration the conotation of the menu item. Probably should be [] Disable caching of web information or something similar. And than we can have have a "Cache Size" header for the disk cache and memory cache prefs.
I see. Is the separation of Clear memory/Clear disk useful ? Personally I just click on both ;)
yeah i usuually click both too, so a clear cache button is probably enough.
Btw, mozilla (1.4b or above) can set the memory cache size as a percentage of RAM size, a good reason to kill the mem cache size pref:). See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105344
I guess if we decide to kill the memory cache size, than we should probably explicitly recommend mozilla 1.4b for users as well.
It would be nice to get some user feedback as to how many normal users know what the word "cache" means. Internet Explorer calls this "Temporary Internet Files" with the description "Pages you view on the Internet are stored in a special folder for quick viewing later". I know this is an advanced option, but teminology is still important imo. See if your Mum/Dad/Girlfriend/Boyfriend understands it :)
I'm fairly certain no normal users have a clue what cache means, so temporary files is probably a good idea, might be worth to open another but on that, so that idea doesn't get lost in this one.
So Memory Cache has gone -- what's the status on the other cache prefs -- they still wanted? fwiw, Firebird doesn't have the comparing prefs either.
Is cache ever enabled in firebird then ? (maybe set to 0 can work as disable btw)
Yep, you can set cache to 0 to disable it.
I'm not opposed to kill them then, Dave ?
Created attachment 17901 [details] Firebird cache prefs
We should also s/Caches/Cache
Well, if there's only one cache pref we may as well move it to the privacy tab (as in firebird) and then we can rename the advacned tab to Languages (bug 113044).
either or, i never saw much point in the cache prefs since i don't think most people know what they mean anyway. I would keep disk size as it maybe useful for users (most likely admins) on large installs, but i always thought the comparing prefs were stupid.
So what about s/Security/Privacy, move disk there and rename Advanced to Language. That would close Seth bug about too generic names. (OT louie is looking for a mail address of you that doesnt bounce ;)
yeah my email has been all screwed up since msu's mail server has been borked (they had to replace a whole dell disk raid with a new emc one i guess). but it works now :)
fixed in cvs