GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 149214
replace gnome-file-entry boxes with option menus constructed from .desktop files
Last modified: 2012-03-05 23:24:03 UTC
Greetings! I've got a couple of suggestions for the dialog, and wasn't sure whether I should file seperate bugs or not, so I went for "dumping" them all here so that the developers/triagers might consider and advise me on the issue. See <http://davyd.angrygoats.net/gnome-2-8/images/gnome-volume-manager.png> for a good screenshot of the dialog. 1. I filed a bug a long time ago (bug 121786) for magicdev, where I suggested replacing the word "Mount" because, frankly, nobody understands what it means. That evolved into just removing the 3 checkboxes instead, and replacing them with GConf options - read bug 121786 comment #6 for details, please. 2. Section titles - currently they're titled "Audio CD", "Blank CD", "DVD Video" and "Digital Camera". What about renaming them to "Audio Media", "Blank Media" and "Video", respectively, and reorder them such: Audio, Video, Blank ? 3. Now you've got a textfield and a browse button for selecting the applications. Would it be possible to make it more like the MIME dialog? I'm not sure it's clever to expose such "low-level" stuff as executable names and command options so clearly in the UI? Thanks for listening.
Clearly needing to enter in a program is not optimal for end users, and it would be very cool if g-v-m could provide the items from the multimedia section of the applications menu instead of making users type the commands out with "%d". With respect to the labels, I don't know if those options actually operate on anything more than CD's and DVD's. So I do not know if altering the label to media would be ideal. In terms of reordering, was there a rationale behind it? I don't have anything concrete to say, other than users would probably change preferences in the order Audio, video, blank or Video,Audio,Blank since I doubt many users want anything to happen automatically when inserting a blank cd. I find normally I only insert a blank cd when I know I am about to burn something. I fire up an application that can burn and I insert the cd immediately before pressing a burn button. In general I think a lot of the uswer visible apsects of this dialog need to be gone over by the usability team in detail. Perhaps Robert would be up for volunteering to go under scrutiny early after the freeze is lifted so we can straighten this stuff out. Jody would probably also want to participate.
In reply to comment #1: Media means CDs and DVDs. Media captures both of them, while I don't know any other "normal" interpretations of the word. I've never heard any regular users refer to a HD storage as "media". I see that it could be confusing, however, so I'm not sure it's ideal either. My only rationale for reordering the types is that it makes more sense to put populated media next to each other and and blanks at the top or bottom. But in any case, I agree that the usability team should do a proper review of the dialog. I've written the bits that concerned me here, so now they have a starting point, at least.
I agree that command-line text fields are a bit non-ideal and that the UI does need the ui team to look into making it more user-friendly, however it must be noted that if the configuration files are properly setup, the user is unlikely to ever need to open this configuration program. Thankfully the commands that are likely to be desired by the user to run on plugging in a device are pretty obvious. comparable settings in Windows land would be in the registry editor :)
btw, Davyd... mind attaching your screenshot to bugzilla? I've never been able to view it because your host always seems down.
so the current mode of thinking is to replace gnome-file-entry boxes with option menus constructed from .desktop files that have specific x-* tags
Created attachment 53134 [details] mockup of a simplified UI Ok. if the user needs to specify a program to run whenever his keyboard is connected it's probably time to start rethinking things. Here is a very basic mockup. Probably should change "video DVD" to "video DVD or Camcorder" and "picture CD" to "picture CD or camera" --Rob
According to its maintainers, "g-v-m hasn't seen a change in three years, it definitely qualifies as unmaintained." It is highly unlikely that there will be any further active development (especially as functionality has been superseded by other modules). Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping - Please feel free to reopen this bug report in the future if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again.