[Fedora-desktop-list] Suggestion for panel and applications menu

[Jaap A. Haitsma]

Alex,

Some comments and some other ideas. Hope they help :-)

On do, 2003-11-20 at 10:58, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 23:21, Jaap A. Haitsma wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I have some comments/suggestions about the current gnome desktop in
> > Fedora. (Feel free to burn the comments/suggestions in flames ;-) )
> > 
> > * I find the standard gnome panel at the bottom of the screen very
> > clunky, because it fills up a large part of the screen. (I know I can
> > auto hide it or make it smaller.)  I find smaller panel (or 2 panels)
> > like they use in ximian desktop See:
> > http://www.ximian.com/images/screenshots/desktop/browsing-windows-network.png
> > looking much more modern
> 
> The two panels use exactly the same total amount of screen space, but I
> agree that buttons on a larger panel use more space. However, its also
> harder to hit the smaller buttons for people with less control and/or
> eyesight, for instance older people.

It's true that they occupy the same space, but according to me it looks
a whole lot better.. You could also opt for just one small bar. I don't
want to offend the people who have physical problems with for smaller
panels, but I believe that the default desktop should be geared towards
the average user. For people with physical problems there should be
ideally an option that switches the desktop to a setting which is
appropriate for them.

> > * I find the menus Preferences, System Settings and System tools quite
> > confusing. They contain many similar menu items and  if you would make a
> > quiz show in which of the three a certain setting should be set, I think
> > the average user would not do that well.
> > I'd like to suggest to have one "Configuration" (or whatever what you
> > want to call it) menu, where you have two sections: user preferences
> > (which sets options for the current user that is logged in) and system
> > preferences (for setting system wide settings for which you need to be
> > or become root)
>
> Does this help much though? There are still two menus that you have to
> look in, and if you didn't know how to find something in the current
> system, how would you know in the new? All it does is add depth to the
> menu, making it harder to navigate.
> 
> I guess for experienced linux users you'd *know* which settings need
> root and which do not (because you know what underlying operations the
> config tools do), but e.g. the difference between the XRandR gnome tool
> that lets you change resolution without root and redhat-config-xfree
> which needs root access is not at all obvious to unexperienced users. 
> Also, I don't see how system tools fits into the config category. 
> 
> At the core there are three types of configuration tools:
> 1) Changes that affect only the current user
> 2) Changes that configure the current machine (X config, network,
> soundcard, etc)
> 3) Configuration of system services that aren't user things, nor really
> machine specific (apache server config, dns server config, database
> config, etc)
> 
> And even in category 1 there are two types of configurations, those that
> are real "preferences", i.e. what the user prefers in the user
> interface, but that don't affect the app working or not (colors, theme,
> ui organization, etc) and "settings", things that must be set correctly
> to make the software work (imap server address, http proxy address,
> etc).
> 
> The user/root split is mostly a 1 vs 2+3 split, although not perfect,
> but mixing services such as apache with network settings probably don't
> make things easier to find/understand. 
> 
> Getting a good organization for this is extremely hard. Much of the
> problem is due to the fact that there just are so many settings, and
> unfortunately many of them are pretty useless for the user. I mean, much
> of the stuff of type 2 should *just work*, and need little or no
> configuration. Getting as much of this working *without* config tools is
> the long term goal. However, at the moment we just have to do our best
> to try to organize the tools we have in the menus.
> 
> Its important to notice that having fewer config tools is important even
> for experienced users, these users have no problem understanding what
> the config tools do, but they still have problems finding the right tool
> if there are too many different tools. Getting rid of unnecessary
> settings increses efficiency for everyone.

I agree with you totally that there should less settings.

My main problem with the current menus is that there are 3 menus which
do settings. Once everything is setup a desktop user does not use these
menus very much anymore. So I would prefer have just 1 menu that does
settings.

I think your 2 and 3 could be combined to one, because they do both
machine specific things. 

The current menu Preferences does not really make clear that they are
user settings/preferences. Maybe rename this to User Settings (or
Preferences)
So then you would have two menus System Settings and User Settings.

You could maybe put this in one application: Control Center. Where you
have two views: user settings and system settings. You basically switch
from a listing of system settings icons to a set of user preferences
icons by pushing a button or so.

Just trying to help

Jaap