[4992] in testers
Minutes from Athena usability meeting, 7/11
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Sat Jul 14 10:09:44 2001
Message-Id: <200107141409.KAA31138@Press-Your-Luck.mit.edu>
To: aui@MIT.EDU, boojum@MIT.EDU
cc: testers@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:09:38 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
Sorry these took so long to get out...please send corrections if I've
gotten anything wrong, or if I've missed anything.
Testers: These should give you a heads up on minor changes to things
which may have been bothering you.
---
Attending: ajfox, amb, aurora, beland, boojum, ghudson, sbjones, wdc,
and random hallway drifters
- Ordering of menu items
We decided that in general, directories come first, then programs,
then (i)info links, and items should be listed alphabetically.
However, as needed, well-supported or recommended items should be
moved up to the top of lists of similar items, so that users will
preferentially chose them. Abby is working on the menus.
- Program launch feedback
We decided not to go with splashscreen feedback, and to stick with the
hourglass cursor thing that we have now.
- (i)nfo items / browser interaction
We decided that menu items that activate web pages (denoted with the
blue (i)) will start a new window, rather than hijack an existing one.
But, this will now be user-configurable through a new global
environment variable. Todd Belton will be asked about modifying
htmlview to accomplish this.
- Missing programs
We punted on gMix and gtcd, since they are non-critical. Greg is
looking into putting gEdit into the release, since it is the
mainstream Gnome text editor. We are not recommending changing the
recommended editor from Emacs at this time.
- gnome-help-browser
Beland will fix the broken link on the help browser's start page to
point to gnome.org. Abby will then add gnome-help-browser back to the
menus.
- Zephyr stacking
zwgc's new default behavior will be ReverseStack=true. That is to say,
one will click away Zephyrs in chronological order. Someone should
submit a patch.
- Zephyr tty-mode
No, it's supposed to be that way. (No zephyrs by default on a
text-only login.)
- Sawfish mouse bindings
Beland will submit a patch to make a double-click on the title bar of
a window toggle maximize/unmaximize, emulating Windows more closely
than the current null effect.
- Sawfish keyboard focus
We will keep the current behavior where new applications that appear
on the screen "steal" keyboard focus. It's too close to public
release to change this, and it's what Windows does, anyway.
- Unrevert back to gnome?
A menu entry is being added to Dash to allow users to go back to the
Gnome interface if they've reverted to Dash using the corresponding
Gnome menu entry. Abby has already submitted code to do this.
- Point to focus
Sawfish does click-to-focus, enter-only, and enter-exit, but not
point-to-focus. Beland will perhaps file an RFE with the Sawfish
maintainer.
- Checkmail item
Abby was wondering whether or not we wanted a "Check waiting mail"
entry on the menus. Discussion led to the suggestion that the gdialog
program would provide an elegant solution to replace Beland's
inelegant hack. She's looking into it.
- Panel bug
Abby and Laura Boojum demoed a bug where panel tear-off menus are hard
to make go away. Beland diagnosed this as a specific symptom to the
general problem that panel has remembering state between logins
sometimes. He will attempt to pin this down and report back soon.
- Sawfish bug
Abby demoed a bug with the Netscape Find dialog having keyboard focus
problems. This was diagnosed as a Sawfish bug (affecting dialog boxes
in general) which we have been experiencing since last summer. She
will write it up so it can be further diagnosed.
- Extraneous applets
It was pointed out that some of the applets on the panel (right-click)
menu are borken. Beland will make a list of which ones should be
removed.
- Future usability directions
Susan was pleased with the usability of the release, despite the lack
of Nautilus (which is still under development, and will hopefully be
included in a future release). The next step for usability, she said,
is figuring out what sort of questions we'd like the next phase of
testing to answer. (A topic for another meeting, which Beland notes
he might not be around to organize.)
---
Cheers,
Beland
===============================================================
Christopher Beland - http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/contact.html
MIT STS/Course 6 (EECS) - MIT Athena User Interface Project
The Talk of MIT ** http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html
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