GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 351534
Checkbox in toolbar should go into preferences window
Last modified: 2009-10-27 13:22:01 UTC
The "Allocated space" checkbox should go into the prefs window, with an explanatory tooltip explaining what this checkbox means.
*** Bug 351533 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I do not agree with this one: there is no reason to bury that in a pref dialog, it is something that the user may want to toggle on a case by case basis.
In that case, a "View -> Show allocated space" menu item would be more HIGgy...
A patch was committed to CVS HEAD.
I am reopening this one: as I said in my firts comment I think that having this functionality on the toolbar made quite a bit of sense. Adding the corresponding menu item is ok, but I am not sure such a functionality should be buried only in a menu. If the checkbox on the toolbar is bad (it doesn't look that bad to me, but maybe is because I use text-beside-icon toolbars) we can look into alternatives. For intance a togglebutton if we find a suitable icon. Or maybe simply have both treeview columns. My point is just that is an important piece of information and should be esily accesible.
Maybe I am missing something, but why is this option so important that it belongs in the toolbar? What is the use case that requires the user to change this option multiple times when using baobab? I would recommend reading the GNOME HIG section on toolbars (especially the guidelines): http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/toolbars.html If there is a use case that shows the widget should to be in the toolbar, it should not be a check-button widget; instead, it could be a drop-down list or toggle button.
> Maybe I am missing something, but why is this option so important that it > belongs in the toolbar? What is the use case that requires the user to change > this option multiple times when using baobab? The use case is: * Paolo wants to see how big is the foo directory * Paolo wants to see how much of his disk the foo directory takes since the two differs, I think it's reasonable to expect the user to change it on a case by case basis. Now, I don't want to make a big fuss about this issue: I think that is something that is nice to have in the toolbar, but if Fabio and everybody else think it should simply stay in the menu I will shut up :) > If there is a use case that shows the widget should to be in the toolbar, it > should not be a check-button widget; instead, it could be a drop-down list or > toggle button. As I said in my previous post, I am more than ok with using a different UI element for the option. A toggle button looks like the natural way to do it, but I have no clue about how the icon would look.
Why not just show 2 columns in the list? "Actual size" and "Used size" or something along those lines?
I agree with Paolo in that the Allocated/Real space checkbox should be more visibile. I believe it is interesting for the user and you can't imagine how many surprises you can have from comparing the two data. I am OK with a toggle button in the toolbar, but I can't figure out how to draw it in order to give an immediate feedback on its scope. It could also be ok having one more row, it's easier, but the GUI will suffer: too many data showed up.
In my previous message, please read: Allocated/Apparent.
I would recommend taking this conversation to the usability mailing list. http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability Keep in mind that the toggle icon will also need to be theme-able especially for accessibility purposes. It might be better to just toggle the text in the column header between Size and Allocated Size (or something) based on the current setting, then it would be easier for a user to distinguish between the two representations of size. If a toolbar widget is added another solution might be to add a view drop-down list similar to the one in nautilus.
A view drop-down list on the toolbar could be a nice solution.
Created attachment 72987 [details] [review] patch for drop-down list I am attaching here a patch which shows the drop-down list for apparent/allocated size in the toolbar. Pls provide feedback.
The UI change in this patch looks okay. It would be better if the corresponding menu item also was modified. I'd suggest removing the "View->Allocated Space" check menu item and replacing it with a "View->Size As" (or similar) sub-menu that contains "Allocated Space" and "Apparent Size" radio menu items. Also, I could not find a reference in the help document that explains the meaning of the terms "Allocated Space" and "Apparent Size".
Adding a tool-tip to the drop-down toolbar widget might make it easier to understand its use, too.