From: Alan Horkan (horkana@maths.tcd.ie)
Date: Tue Jun 03 2003 - 13:20:07 EDT
On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 12:48:17 -0400
> From: David Adam Bordoley <bordoley@msu.edu>
> To: usability@gnome.org, abiword-dev@abisource.com
> Subject: [Usability] [RFC] Proposed AbiWord preferences dialog mockup
>
>
> > From: Christian Neumair <chris@gnome-de.org>
> >
> > I just compiled a bunch of screenshots of my mockup for a new AbiWord
> > preferences dialog [1-4].
> > Please have a look at them and make proposals on what I can still
> > improve. I like it much more than the old dialog but I'm not completely
> > satisfied. Especially the buttons IMO are far away from looking perfect.
> > Thanks for your efforts!
> >
> > regs,
> > Chris
> >
> > [1] http://gnome-de.org/~manny/prefsmockup1.png
> General:
> 1. Why not move the statusbar and ruler prefs directly into the view menu.
> Would make access to these much quicker.
Dont have the latest version of abiword in front of me but I am fairly
sure they are also avialable in the menu.
> 2. I thought there was a global gnome pref for cursor blink, wouldn't be
> better to use this pref?
Probably, I expect the developers were not aware of this global
preference if you could confirm that you didn't imagine it I expect they
would add it at some point.
> 3. I think it would be better to move the toolbar editting interface stuff
> into a seperate dialog. In epiphany we use edit->toolbars.
>
> 4. Why would you disable tooltips?
I think some people find them annoying (advanced users maybe).
MS Word and The Gimp have this option too.
> > [2] http://gnome-de.org/~manny/prefsmockup2.png
>
> I can't pin it down, but it seems like most of these prefs are technobabble.
> Shouldn't the right to left prefs just work automagically based on locale?
Ideally yes but it is more complicated than that, for now the option has
to stay.
> The glyph prefs are particularly crypic and meaningless to 99.9% of people i
> would guess. Are there sane defaults that can be used instead. Seems odd to
> have a preference for one specific language.
> You should default automatic save to on, thats a nice feature :)
It impacts on performance and is not really necessary. Besides,
(depending on compile time options) if abiword crashes a Document.CRASHED
file will be created so you wont lose any data.
> > [3] http://gnome-de.org/~manny/prefsmockup3.png
>
> If you've chosen to include a custom dictionary, why would you choose not to
> make suggestions from it?
>
> > [4] http://gnome-de.org/~manny/prefsmockup4.png
>
> 1. Kill the splash screen pref. Splash screens are poor excuses for long
> load times. It is especially unneeded now that gnome has application launch
> feedback.
Abiword doesn't have a long launch time. Abiword generally loads long
before the splash screen is finished, the splash screen is
seperate clicking on the splash screen dismisses it.
A splash screen is more obvious than launch feedback.
I dont know if abiword supports startup notification yet.
> 2. Why would you not automatically load all plugins? (legit question)
Performance. Some plugins are a bit big.
Why do you need to say legit question?
> 3. Are preference schemes really necessary? Seems like something 1 out of
> 1000 people will use.
While you could rip them all out and produce a much simpler layout I dont
think abiword is ready for that, but if there are ways to pickup system
preferences and set sensible defaults then all the better.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
PS Abiword has special keybinding modes for both Vi and Emacs users which
can be accessed by editing the file Abiword.Profile but this feature could
really do with some hacking.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Tue Jun 03 2003 - 13:35:33 EDT
