[236] in Athena User Interface
Re: Usability testing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Tibbetts)
Fri Jun 23 21:46:17 2000
Message-Id: <200006240146.VAA01593@hikari-no-ken.mit.edu>
To: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
cc: aui@MIT.EDU, tibbetts@MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 23 Jun 2000 08:31:02 EDT."
<200006231231.IAA08625@No-Whammies.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 21:46:11 -0400
From: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
On 6/23 you wrote:
> In This Email:
> - What to put on taskbar(s), where to put it/them
> - Window actions
> - Windows and Mac themes
> - Shortcut binding
In general, I think that shorter emails with only a single point each
are superior. It makes the threads easier to follow.
> On the Taskbar
>
>
> So I configured my login to look like what I think the default should
> be. I quickly ran out of room on the taskbar, which is why I was
> wanting to get multiple rows out of the panel. (Yes, you can make the
> tasklist more than 2 rows, but you can't have more than 1 row of icons
> and applets per panel like you can in Windows.)
>
> What I have, from left to right:
>
> - Icon: Gnome menus
> - Icon: Mail reader (exmh for now)
> - Icon: Web browser (netscape)
> - Icon: Text editor (emacs)
> - Icon: Terminal (xterm, soon to be gnome-terminal)
> - Icon: Help (Gnome help browser)
> - Icon: File manager (gmc for now)
> - Applet (narrow): Removable media (non-functional)
> - Applet (very wide): Tasklist
> - Icon: Lock screen (panel GUI for xss)
> - Icon: Logout (Gnome logout dialog)
> - Applet: Text-only clock showing date and time
Do we really want an icon on the panel for each common application?
This seems like it is going to get cluttered quickly, because there
will always be a temptation to add "just one more icon".
> (And yes, all the icons are ugly - especially the cursor you get over
> the minimize button on window, I think - and some of them are
> dangerously confusing, and we are working on getting better ones, but
> may need help.)
Which icons are ugly? I think that this is overly vague. Maybe we
should start a "Graphic Artist Hit List" in case we ever get one.
> So the problem I had was mainly with the tasklist (the "icon pile" for
> active and/or iconfied windows). When I had it on "make an icon for
> all windows, iconified or not" I found I couldn't read the titles of
> the windows. Then again, I may be atypical in opening a lot of
> windows at once, and needing to see the latter part of the window name
> so I know what host my emacs and xterm windows are running on, and
> what web page my Netscape windows are looking at. Normal users may be
> happy just seeing the icons (which are actually nice) and a truncated
> name.
You have too many windows. Most users have no more than (let me check
my ass) 4 windows most of the time. If we are not designing AUI for
Brad and I then we are also not designing it for you.
Most of your thoughts on desktop design, while interesting, seem to be
more your own personal quest for the correct customization than a good
setup for the default user. I think that is what we really need to
think about.
> On Windows and Mac Themes
Yeah, fine, we will include some windows and mac themes. Let it go.
> On Shortcut Bindings
>
> That's M-Tab circulates windows, nothing more. Surely there are other
> useful suggestions...perhaps a informal survey is in order?
This is the only global one, there are others. I don't think that we
should go out of our way to use up more keybindings.
tibbetts
-*- http://www.mit.edu/~tibbetts -*- finger tibbetts@monk.mit.edu -*-
