GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 127267
[PATCH] Eel stock dialogs do not follow HIG
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
The dialogs provided by eel-stock-dialogs.c are not HIG compliant. See http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/windows.html#alert-windows for details on HIG compliant alerts.
Created attachment 21569 [details] [review] Proposed Patch.
Created attachment 21570 [details] New proposed header file.
Created attachment 21571 [details] New proposed source file.
The attached files implement the eel half of this proposed change. I will attach a patch for nautilus half later in the week.
Created attachment 21842 [details] [review] [Part One] Proposed eel patch (updated).
Created attachment 21843 [details] [review] Proposed new eel header file (updated).
Created attachment 21844 [details] [review] Proposed new eel source file (updated).
Created attachment 21845 [details] [review] [Part Two] Proposed nautilus patch.
The attached patch files modify eel and nautilus to display HIG compliant alert dialogs. I modified the eel stock dialogs to support setting primary and secondary message text. Feedback is much appreciated. Thanks, Dennis
Created attachment 21846 [details] A sample screenshot of one dialog.
Marking priority high because there is a patch, and ccing usability incase anyone wants to check this. Dennis, you rock!
There is a major bug with this new dialog. You can't have a dialog asking you to overwrite a file that doesn't properly display the full filename of the target file. Even better would be something that tells you the size/name/date of the source file and the size/name/date of the target file. The new (and old) dialog is useless for an average user.
I agree. The overwrite dialog is pretty useless, but the point of the proposed patch is to make the various alert dialogs in eel HIG compliant. I feel what you are requesting may be beyond the scope of this bug report. Maybe a new bug report should be opened for the overwrite dialog? (If one has not been opened already.) If I recall correctly, Mark has a web page with some great suggestion for the overwrite file dialog. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the link. :-(
BTW, to clarify. The ellipsized file name is nothing new. The old dialog does the same thing. The ellipsizing could be disabled by changing the following code in nautilus-file-operations.c. @@ -1039,39 +1052,42 @@ handle_transfer_overwrite (const GnomeVF } /* transfer conflict, prompt the user to replace or skip */ - formatted_name = format_and_ellipsize_uri_for_dialog ( - parent_for_error_dialog (transfer_info), progress_info->target_name); + formatted_name = eel_format_uri_for_display (progress_info->target_name);
I agree with Dennis. These dialogs need a _lot_ of usability work[1] but that is outside the scope of this bug. That will be a lot easier to do once we have these HIG patches in. What we need is a to all go through these dialogs looking for usability problems, and then file bugs(cc me please). Another thing that would be REALLY useful would be a screenshot of every possible eror/alert dialog with a description of what was done to generate them. With that I/We could design some really nice dialogs. [1] eg. If you cancel a move the files you tried to move are copied anyway. More details are on an old blog of mine at http://sisob.tuxfamily.org/archives/000078.html - maybe that's the one Dennis was thinking of.
Yes, that is the web page. Thanks for reposting the link.
Ok, i commited something based on this. I made some changes to the implementation of eel-alert-dialog, and made it use GtkExpander for the details. I also fixed some bugs in the nautilus patch, changed which strings were primary/secondary in some places and, changed a few messages.
Great! Thanks Alex.