[652] in Athena User Interface
Re: Are we sending the Eazel usability concerns in?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Fri Jan 26 01:44:57 2001
Message-Id: <200101260644.BAA21891@Press-Your-Luck.mit.edu>
To: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
cc: aui@MIT.EDU
cc: sbjones@MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: The events that comprise the history of the universe.
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 01:44:53 -0500
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
In general, yes, and we've been getting an excellent response...
> When the file manager was on the task bar and labeled File
> Manager, most participants could do this. However, since the
> file manager window doesn't actually open, once the lbackground
> changed and the little house appeared in the left hand corner
> they were less sure what to do and most had to be prompted to
> try opening the house.
This was reported as a bug and has since been fixed.
> The lack of any cue that the file manager was opening
> (hourglass, clock,...) caused a proliferation of file manager
> windows once they found the correct thing to click to open the
> file manager window.
This has been discussed a lot on the gnome-gui list and I think made
it back to Eazel in some mail from Susan that got forwarded to
nautilus-list@eazel.com by rebecka, who is on aui@mit.edu. In any
case, mainline Gnome is fixing this problem by integrating the xalf
package. We easily can implement xalf-based feedback ourselves on
Athena simply by installing the program in the release and using it as
a wrapper script for launchers and menu items.
> Testers tried to drag file to the desktop. When that didn't work
> they began to look for a copy command.
This appears to be fixed in the latest build, though I don't ever
remember it being broken.
> Testers had trouble with the instruction to Copy. Several looked
> for a Copy command under the Edit menu in the File Manager.
>
> Since the default window does not have the tree open, several
> testers opened a second file manager and dragged from one window to
> the other.
>
> Questions arose about single or double clicking. Testers not sure
> which to do.
There seem to be several bugs with copying files which we've
discovered in the course of testing...right now, I'm typing up my
notes so I can send them to Susan and document these bugs. I'll
report technical bugs directly into Eazel's bugzilla; large-scale
usability questions, like, "tree should be up by default" or "double
clicking is better" and whatnot, can be conveyed by sending the URL
for Susan's synthesis to nautilus-list (when she finished integrating
everything).
I'd be happy to do that if Rebecka doesn't beat me to it. 8)
Also, weren't some Nautilus developers going to be in the area next
month or something?
