GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 687295
Mount/partition UI is confusing.
Last modified: 2012-11-15 18:35:54 UTC
Fielded from http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=2389159&perpage=40&pagenumber=343#post409121338 (There's an occasional paywall that goes up, so I've copied the post in here) """ I just learned that the plus and minus buttons in Gnome's new Disk program are for adding and removing partitions, not mounting and unmounting file systems. So I just erased a partition on an SD card that I believe was ext3 formatted. It's a openelec system for a raspberry pi. It would be neat to get that partition and its data back. What are the odds of that happening? """ It's probably worth it to show Create / Trash icons instead of Add / Remove.
I agree with this: the symbolic icons are too ambiguous. That's particularly bad when dealing with potentially destructive actions. Using a text label for these buttons makes sense. I also wonder whether the run icon should be replaced with a disclosure triangle.
Jasper: I'm generally not a big fan of people filing bugs from stuff they read on the Internet. It's just not very useful since I as a maintainer cannot easily have a conversation with the person who think they found a bug - only with the messenger. Please refrain from doing this in the future - thanks! Second, there are confirmation dialogs shown to the user *after* he presses both the create-partition ("+") or delete-partition ("-") buttons... so I'm really not sure how you can blame the choice of icons for losing data. Sounds more like the problem exists between chair and keyboard. I'm not opposed to changing the "-" icon to a "(trashcan)" icon nor do I disagree with changing other icons - for example play/stop icons for mount/unmount is not ideal (and this is not news either).
(In reply to comment #2) > Second, there are confirmation dialogs shown to the user *after* he presses > both the create-partition ("+") or delete-partition ("-") buttons... so I'm > really not sure how you can blame the choice of icons for losing data. Sounds > more like the problem exists between chair and keyboard. Yeah, and he admits to such, but research has shown that whatever confirmation dialog you do is going to get skipped through out of habit. ( http://www.alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning ) Obviously, the Undo isn't that usable a solution, but it clearly points out that confirmation dialogs don't work. > I'm not opposed to changing the "-" icon to a "(trashcan)" icon nor do I > disagree with changing other icons - for example play/stop icons for > mount/unmount is not ideal (and this is not news either). I think that'd be a great first step.
Yes, I know about confirmation dialogs and how users don't read them but there's no (sane) way to add undo/redo for actions. For now I've added this http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-disk-utility/commit/?id=3f7d58c468347c264c7277dc182ba3d49deabd40 http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/gnome-disks-confirmation-dialog-shows-affected-devices-1.png http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/gnome-disks-confirmation-dialog-shows-affected-devices-2.png which is not ideal but better than nothing. Closing this as FIXED as this is as close we can get to resolving the original complaint in the near term. Please open separate bugs for the other things (icon changes etc.).
(In reply to comment #4) > Yes, I know about confirmation dialogs and how users don't read them but > there's no (sane) way to add undo/redo for actions. For now I've added this Yeah I think it makes sense in this case. > http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-disk-utility/commit/?id=3f7d58c468347c264c7277dc182ba3d49deabd40 > > http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/gnome-disks-confirmation-dialog-shows-affected-devices-1.png > > http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/gnome-disks-confirmation-dialog-shows-affected-devices-2.png ... Looks good. A couple of minor observations - it would look better if the list wasn't indented - it breaks the layout of the dialog. Also, you seem to have an unnecessary scroll bar there. :) > Please open separate bugs for the other things (icon changes etc.). Sure thing. Thanks David.