GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 85673
[ui-review][doc] Preferences dialog issues
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
The following issues came out of the recent ui-review and are recommended for fixing prior to GNOME 2.0.1: - List should have a 'Categories:' label with mnemonic - All preference panes should have a help button
Oops, forgot to add the comments on the individual categories: View Defaults: - s/Arrange Items/Arrange items (x2) - s/Use tighter layout/Use compact layout - s/Sort in reversed order/Sort in reverse - s/View Defaults/Views Appearance: - Remove help text 'Click on a theme to .... ' - s/Add New Theme/Add Theme - s/Nautilus Themes/Themes - Needs mnemonics Windows: - s/status bar/statusbar - s/sidebar/side pane - s/in a seperate window/in a new window - s/in new windows// - it is superfluous for options 2-5 - s/Opening New Windows/New Windows Display - First option doesn't really fit with the other options - move it out of the frame, and add new frame for it ('New Window Behavior") Desktop & Trash: - s/Use Nautilus to draw the desktop/Use Nautilus to draw the desktop background - s/Use your home folder as the desktop/use your home folder as the desktop background - s/Desktop/Desktop Background Icon & List View: - s/Properties window/Properties dialog - Remove text in parenthesis - it will be in the help - s/Show\/Hide/Show and remove 'Show' from each item - s/Sorting Order/Sort - s/Always list folders before files/Folders before Files Icon captions: - Remove help text Sidebar Panels: - s/Sidebar Panels/Side Pane - s/Display [tab name] in sidebar/[tab name] - s/Show only folders (no files) in the tree/Show folders only Navigation: - Suggestion removing entire category until/unless web browsing is 100% functional. Until then, home in the toolbar should be directed to user's home directory. Speed Tradeoffs: - s/Speed Tradeoffs/Performance - s/Local Files Only/Local file only - s/Don't .../Do not - s/Show Count of Items in Folders/Show Number of Items in Folders
Adding keywords to all ui-review bugs in one mass change, sorry for the spam. It would be very nice if the folks doing UI review stuff would be sure to add 'PATCH' to the bugs that have those. I'm (tentatively) not marking these 'high' but the release team [having gotten approval from the docs and i18n people] would like to see these in ASAP on the 2.0.1 branches, so that i18n folks can start translating at their convenience.
comments on navigation preferences: The ability to change the home dir is crack rot regardless of webbrowsing and should be removed as recommended(see bug 78891). Built in bookmarks should be removed all together (see bug 74896) actually bookmarks should be removed period but that's another issue.
Calum: Why not rename "speed tradeoffs" something like previewing since all these prefs affect how nautilus decides what to preview. Seems like a potentially more descriptive term for the preferences. What do you think?
OK, for the /nth/ time removing the home dir preference is not 'recommended' by anyone except yourself, Dave. Yes, lots of people agree with you but yes, /lots/ of people disagree. Please don't treat your own opinion as an edict from on high.
it's recommended in the bug report. and alex agreed too. in fact the only person on the list who disagreed was dave watson i believe...plus those comments are my opinion, not me talking as a bug triager. (daveb thinks he should add marks when making a personal opinion from now on)...
"Speed tradeoffs" v. "Previewing"... hmm, have to say at first glance that "Speed tradeoffs" still sounds more descriptive to me, although I've never been mad keen on the term. I'm sure I saw another suggestion on the nautilus list a month or so ago that I thought at the time might work better, but I forget what it was now :/
After¦some¦discussion¦with¦the¦release¦team,¦in¦order¦to¦get¦these¦in¦to¦2.0.1 and¦to¦not¦make¦the¦translators¦shoot¦us,¦these¦need¦to¦get¦in¦ASAP¦:)¦I'm marking¦them¦'urgent'/2.0.1¦as¦a¦result;¦it¦would¦be¦greatly¦appreciated¦if maintainers¦of¦the¦affected¦components¦can¦work¦on¦getting¦these¦patched¦ASAP¦so that¦the¦translators¦can¦get¦cracking¦on¦them¦for¦the¦next¦release.¦[Subject,¦of course,¦to¦maintainer¦agreement¦with¦the¦goals¦of¦the¦review¦:)¦
[Search for 'luis spamming' to catch every instance of this email.] In order to better track Sun's bugs for Sun and Ximian's internal use, I've added a temporary keyword to some bugs. I apologize for the spam, and for the use of an additional keyword, but this is the best way for Sun to track 'it's' bugs without interfering with the community's own triage and bug behavior. If you have any questions or objections, please drop me a note at louie@ximian.com or email bugmaster@gnome.org for more open discussion.
I'll like to start working on this, but I have a question, where it's supposed to point the help buttons of each preference pane? Is there a help on each item somewhere?
Yes, section 1.8.1 has subsections for each page, including screenshots. I'm probably going to work on this today, unless you can get it done very quickly!
Alex & Dave discussed this and decided: o they want to keep the help text in the brackets, as they don't think the user should have to view the help docs to understand the options. o they don't want to change 'Desktop' to 'Desktop Background' as they think 'Desktop' is a widely understood concept, and 'Desktop Background' is currently understood to be the background picture or colors. o they don't want Help buttons on each pane. Though they'd probably be OK with making the existing 'Help' button show the section corresponding to the current page. (Maybe that is what Calum meant.)
Eugene, any thoughts about Alex and Dave not wanting to remove the text in parentheses (which explains that hidden files start with ".", and backups end with "~")? Can you think of a better label for these two items that would convey the same information but without using the parentheses, which I think is what you're really objecting to? As Damon points out, not every application uses the "~" convention for its backup files, so removing that additional information could easily leave the user confused.
Created attachment 9723 [details] [review] Patch to eel that adds a 'Cat_egories' label above the list of categories, and also fixes a minor alignment bug
Created attachment 9724 [details] [review] Patch to nautilus to fix most of the rest
Oops. I meant to change the 'View Defaults' category name to 'Views' as well. Some issues: o I removed the help text on the 'Appearance' page as suggested, though I'm not certain that is a good idea. When removing themes it is pretty useful. o I couldn't figure out how to remove the help text on the 'Icon Captions' page without leaving blank space instead, so I haven't done that. o The 'Side Panes' page looks very empty now. o I #ifdef'ed out the 'Navigation' page as suggested, and changed all uses of these preferences so that the home page is always the users $HOME, and that the system bookmarks are never shown. (I used #ifdef WEB_NAVIGATION_ENABLED around all this stuff)
My reasons for suggesting this change were firstly, that I thought that the help was a better location for this information and secondly, that I wanted to remove the parentheses. Do Alex and Dave want to keep the information in the parentheses in both cases? Is there any other way of marking hidden files than with a period at the start? I don't think I can rephrase these labels to avoid the parentheses, but filenames should be spelled as one word. So how about: [] Show hidden files [] Show backup files (filenames that end with "~")
I don't think that the "widely understood" concept of the desktop is very clear. What Alex and Dave are saying (I think) is: desktop = Nautilus desktop background + Nautilus desktop background objects But the terms "GNOME desktop" and "desktop" are often used to refer to the entire GNOME UI, not just the Nautilus parts. That is: desktop = desktop background + desktop background objects + panels + windows + other workspaces So there is a danger of confusion here between the part of the desktop that Nautilus controls, and the GNOME desktop (that also includes windows, workspaces, panels, and so on). I suggested how to use these terms on the Preferences dialog in the following message: http://lists.eazel.com/pipermail/nautilus-list/2002-April/008196.html If we used "Use Nautilus to draw the desktop background and desktop background objects", how would that be? I think that we can educate our users as to what we mean by desktop and desktop background, and the best way to do this is to use these terms consistently in the UI and in the documentation.
Damon, feel free to commit the eel change, and the nautilus patch with two changes: Keep the help text for the theme selector, I think you're right about the remove text being helpful. Change "New Windows Display" to "New Window Display"
OK. I've committed what Dave suggested. Things not done (see above for reasons): Appearance: - Remove help text 'Click on a theme to .... ' Windows: - s/Opening New Windows/New Windows Display We used 'New Window Display' instead here, to match the other frame 'New Window Behavior'. Desktop & Trash: - s/Use Nautilus to draw the desktop/Use Nautilus to draw the desktop background - s/Use your home folder as the desktop/use your home folder as the desktop background - s/Desktop/Desktop Background Icon & List View: - Remove text in parenthesis - it will be in the help Icon captions: - Remove help text
I committed a change to replace "file names" with "filenames", but I kept the the parenthetical help text. My rationale is that "hidden files" have a well-defined meaning for macos and windows (a "hidden" flag), that is very different from its meaning on unix (begins with a period). I believe that users will assume they know what a hidden file means, but they will be wrong. Because they will make the assumption that they know what it means, they will not even look at the help text. If they do look for help on how to make a file hidden, it will probably be in the file properties dialog, not this properties page.
*** Bug 76302 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
As for the "Use nautilus to draw the desktop" preference Why not define this preference based on its user visible effect. (most users have no clue what draw desktop means) instead call it something like "enable desktop icons" as this more clearly defines the user visible effect of this preference. just an idea.
User Guide docs updated to reflect the changes to the dialogs.
I'm closing; if there are any remaining issues they should be discussed in unique bugs.