GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 149323
HIG issues with Theme Preferences
Last modified: 2006-07-07 22:08:19 UTC
- open theme preferences - select predefined theme - (switching theme lasts about 5-10 seconds with many windows open) - change the theme details (e.g. select another icon set) - now you have a custom theme - select another predefined theme - the content of the custom theme is overridden with the new selected theme So there are 2 HIG issues: 1. because the duration of applying the new theme is longer than 1 second, it should not be Instant Apply (http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/diff-from-1.0/windows-utility.html#windows-instant-apply) 2. because the user created custom theme is replaced without asking the user to do so (and it is not obviously that selecting a new theme overrides the custom theme) this violates the HIG (http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/diff-from-1.0/principles-forgiveness.html)
*** Bug 161536 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I disagree that number 2 violates the HIG: "If an action is very dangerous, and there is no way to undo the result, warn the user and ask for confirmation. Only do this in extreme cases, though; if frequently faced with such confirmation messages, users begin to ignore them, making them worse than useless." The action is not very dangerous and is easily undone.
Tom: Yes, I agree with you, because there is a "Revert" button. I've checked the CVS log: At the time I filed the bug I was running version 2.6.x which did not have this button yet. Nevertheless I think number 1 violates the HIG. ;-)
I brought this subject up on the usability mailing list: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2006-April/msg00072.html (n.b. discussion continued into May). The conclusion was that because this has been instant apply for so long, it should not be changed to explicit apply, and then changed back again once theme switching was faster. The real problem is be that theme switching should be made faster. An interim solution suggested was to provide feedback while theme switching is taking place, but it is not currently possible to extract this information from the various themeing architectures (gtk+, icons, metacity).