GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 695417
Wifi toggle in Power Saving panel is ambiguous
Last modified: 2015-08-03 15:40:28 UTC
The Power settings panel has a new Wi-Fi item under the heading "Power Saving." As well as the label "Wi-Fi", there is some added descriptive text that says "Turns off wireless devices." At first glance, I ended up with the misconception that this toggle was for some kind of Wi-Fi power saving feature. I think the description really contributed to my error. Usually we let switch widgets speak for themselves, such that we can have a noun like Wi-Fi and an on/off switch and that plainly means "Turn Wi-Fi on or off." When I read the description, I had that same pattern in mind, so I interpreted it as "Turn the feature that turns Wi-Fi on or off." As I soon learned (after toggling the switch!), the description is redundant: this particular label says what clicking the switch widget is going to do. (And then only in the case that the switch is set to On). I suspect this panel would be easier to understand if the extra description under "Wi-Fi" was simply removed.
Created attachment 238350 [details] Screenshot of the Power settings panel with the Wi-Fi toggle visible
I don't think it's confusing at all, it's just wrong - the description is clear that the option is to turn off Wi-Fi, so if the option is turned on, Wi-Fi should be turned off. That's the opposite of what it does. Corrected text would read "Turns on wireless devices" But I think we should just remove the description, since that's really obvious....
I just noticed Bug #698419 is related
Created attachment 279156 [details] [review] power: ambiguous wifi and mobile broadband labels Currently these switches function the opposite of their descriptions. E.g. the wi-fi switch says "turns off wireless devices" which means that if the switch is on, wi-fi would go off, but actually the behavior is the opposite. Reword the labels to be less confusing. Patch option #1 of 2, I'd favor just removing the descriptions since there are other things (Bluetooth) there that have no descriptions.
Created attachment 279160 [details] [review] power: ambiguous wi-fi and mobile broadband labels Currently these switches function the opposite of their descriptions. E.g. the wi-fi switch says "turns off wireless devices" which means that if the switch is on, wi-fi would go off, but actually the behavior is the opposite. Remove these labels: they are purely confusing, and the behavior of the switches is clear without them. Patch option #2
Bastien, what do you think here? I think I prefer my option #2....
Review of attachment 279156 [details] [review]: That seems like the better one of the two.
And if we decide to go with option #2 later, at least it's not a string change.
OK, thanks. Attachment 279156 [details] pushed as 643a7a6 - power: ambiguous wifi and mobile broadband labels
*** Bug 707559 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 744635 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
After seeing these two setttings: * "Wireless devices require extra power" * "Mobile broadband devices require extra power" I still have no idea what they are supposed to do. What does it mean by "extra power"? Does that mean that wifi is disabled when my battery is low? Or does that mean wifi will be put into some power saving mode?
I'm not sure what to do here....
(In reply to Ben Davis from comment #12) > After seeing these two setttings: > > * "Wireless devices require extra power" > * "Mobile broadband devices require extra power" > > I still have no idea what they are supposed to do. What does it mean by > "extra power"? Does that mean that wifi is disabled when my battery is low? > Or does that mean wifi will be put into some power saving mode? I agree that "extra" is confusing here - extra to what? These strings need to do two things - 1. They need to clarify that the device will be disabled when the switch is off. 2. They need to explain that this will save power. So you could go with something like "Turn off Wi-Fi to save power."
Created attachment 302293 [details] [review] power: Improve labels for wifi and mobile broadband toggles OK, that's clearly a good choice, thanks. :)
I've also done s/WiMax/LTE/ in a subsequent patch. Attachment 302293 [details] pushed as 7333e08 - power: Improve labels for wifi and mobile broadband toggles