[4757] in testers
9.0.6: Menu and launching-related issues
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Tue Jun 12 07:45:55 2001
Message-Id: <200106121145.HAA06860@space-invaders.mit.edu>
To: testers@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 07:45:42 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
Testing revealed a few bugs and/or usability problems with the menu
system and program launching in general.
Unless otherwise noted, tested with a clean (from /usr/prototype_user)
set of dotfiles in the gu account.
---gyruss Solaris 9.0.6---
* gyruss, despite being a Solaris box claiming to run 9.0.6
(according to the version file), still isn't getting the updated
menus. This is apparently because of a faulty symlink at:
/afs/dev.mit.edu/system/sun4x_58/srvd-9.0/usr/athena/share/gnome/athena/menus
- Selecting an (i) item from the menu when I've already got Netscape
open hijacks my Netscape window and puts its own content there. 8(
This can be solved by just adding a changing the command-line flag
to "openURL(url-you-want, new window)". It also seems that much of
the functionality of htmlview could be given over to
gnome-moz-remote, which I've found to be reliable, and has the
feature of being compatible with Mozilla already.
- I'm somewhat dissatisfied at the amount of feedback I was getting
after doing things like starting Netscape. This is a somewhat slow
machine; after about 30 seconds, I had forgetten altogether I had
already started Netscape, and thus failed to notice both the
hourglass (which only appears when you are pointing at the root
window, I think -- certainly when you're pointing at other
applications, which seems to be 80% of the time or so for me,
there's no hourglass) and the flashy star I had turned on (which is
easy to lose and isn't consistent about its location). I would
seriously consider enabling a splashscreen for menu items that take
longer than two seconds to show signs of some activity on the
slowest machines. (Maybe that would be bit much...I dunno, it'd be
good to play around with it in real life.) Maybe being a little
more intrusive would be beneficial. It's very easy to turn off or
make less intrusive for people who don't need the feedback. (I
found putting feedback in the tasklist only potentially quite
confusing -- it looks like your app has already started, but is
being shy.) It would be better, I think if xalf had a facility for
placing a Netscape-like thumper in the same corner of the screen
all the time. That sort of thing seems to work really well. But
anyway...maybe some testing on unsuspecting users would be useful
here, to see what level of feedback is actually needed. It's a
relatively targeted task and could probably handled with a minimum
of fuss. (Blah, I'm sleepy now and probably not 100% coherent.)
- Logos for Netscape, Control Center, Terminal, etc. in the tasklist
seem to have severe colormap problems
- gmenu: Is looking in the traditional location on local disk for the
"Program menus" while the panel and panel capplet are looking in
the new Athena location. As a result, gmenu displays a listing the
user should never see.
- gmenu: Pushing "Sort submenu" when selecting "Favorites (use
menus)" pops up a dialog box that tells you you don't have
permission to do that, even though you can move things around
manually.
===============================================================
Christopher Beland - http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/contact.html
MIT STS/Course 6 (EECS) - MIT Athena User Interface Project
===============================================================
