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List:       evms-devel
Subject:    Re: [Evms-devel] Usability enhancements
From:       Luciano Chavez <lnx1138 () us ! ibm ! com>
Date:       2002-09-19 16:20:55
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On Thu, 2002-09-19 at 09:34, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 04:12:12PM -0500, Luciano Chavez wrote:
> 
> Speaking of evmsn...  I have watched far too many people (myself included)
> become frustrated at evmsn because its dialogs have subtly different UI
> semantics than most text-based dialogs (for example dialog(1)).
> Specifically, how some items are selected with the spacebar while others are
> selected with Enter.
> 
Matt,

This enter/spacebar thing and the mixture of context specific and
general actions in the action menus is a big gripe with everyone.
Another is the handling of data entry for configuration options. These
deficiencies have been there since I took over the code from the
original developer. I really do want to correct all of this at some
point. The fact that we are adding more function all the time and
tweaking the GUI and evmsn prevents me on spending the time on this at
the moment. 

Some simple solutions that have been mentioned have been to provide a
menu key at the bottom to display general actions (ala the Actions menu
of the GUI) and to only provide truly context specific actions when
selecting a single object (ala the context popup menus in the GUI).

Using enter consistently for selection and completing input and
providing additional menu keys to navigate forward or complete an
operation (like in the GUI) would also be nice.

> etc.  One possible approach would be to use Enter exclusively for item
> selection, and to add an OK/Continue button (also selected with Enter) which
> could be navigated to and highlighted.
> 

Yep.

> I'm thrilled that you continue to show concern for UI issues; this area is
> often neglected in favour of adding more tangible functionality.  I'm also
> often grateful for the flexible UI options that are provided (X, ncurses,
> CLI).  Keep up the good work!
>

It *is* my job, you know! :) I truly enjoy trying to present the work of
the team in a good light. Face it, a user's experience and judgment of a
product is often based on the user interface and not always on the
technology (which EVMS is an awesome technology). 

BTW, being that I am not a usability person, I did heavily consult the
GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (draft and current) when working on the
GUI. I also got some critiques and feedback from folks on the GNOME
Usability mailing list. The GUI is not 100% HIG compliant but at least I
followed some guidelines :). There is work still to do in the plug-ins
to make some of their popup message requests appear more seamless with
the GUI's attempts at following the HIG guidelines.

Thanks to all for the feedback.
 
-- 
regards,

Luciano Chavez

lnx1138@us.ibm.com          
http://evms.sourceforge.net



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