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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: knotifywidget
From:       Carsten Pfeiffer <carpdjih () cetus ! zrz ! tu-berlin ! de>
Date:       2002-07-11 10:17:35
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On Wednesday 10 July 2002 00:30, you wrote:

Hiya,

> got some time to punt around the UI file you dcc'd me the other day ...
> i've attached what i've got to this point, though i'm unhappy with it
> still. however, since you said you were hoping to having something together
> by today i thought i'd send it along anyways to keep pace with your
> development. =)

I tried hard, but we had 36°C and my poor computer doesn't work well lat those 
temperatures :( The CPU is a bit defect and it simply crashes the system when 
it's getting a bit warmer :-/

> note that "passive popup" is now a sub setting of "message in a window" ...
> this is done to group common functionality from the user's perspective and
> to cut down on the number of top-level choices.

Ok.

> Issue I: System Bell
[...]
> if you do not want to / do not have the time to do this, please let me know
> when the knotify kcm is finished so that i may do so

Ok. Then we have the question, what the application specific dialog should do. 
Should it also offer that option?

> Issue 2: Diable All Sounds
> ===================
> the wording is not great. it makes it sound like a permanant thing. i've
> replaced it with the wording "Turn all sounds off" but i'm not sure that
> this isn't equally poor ;-)

;)

It becomes worse, if you imagine the same in the kcontrol module -- not just 
for one app, but for all! Maybe a checkbox above the buttons "Apply to all 
Applications" (only in kcontrol) would be ok?

> i'm still mulling over what the best way to present this would be ... for
> now i've created a "Quick Controls" area ...

Looks good to me.

> i contemplated an "All" item in the Events list, but then the URL choosers
> would be rather irrelevant ...

Flexibility and usability don't always work hand in hand ;)

> this dialog as you sent it to me introduced a lot of mouse movement when
> changing several options (click on an event, go to the bottom and change
> things; go to the top and click on an event, go to the bottom and change
> things; ....) it also doesn't create a very strong visual relationship
> between the two actions.
>
> i've re-ordered it to use a left->right relationship since this is used in
> many places (file manager, kcontrol, kicker settings) and put all the
> actions into a group box titled "Actions".

I see the point, but this creates a much bigger usability problem: You can 
only see the first few words of the event and you would have to scroll all 
the time to read it completely. Even with those short example events, there 
is a scrollbar and the dialog is already 640 pixels wide for me.

Now imagine an event:
"Es ist ein schweres Problem aufgetreten, das zum Abbruch des Programms 
geführt hat". Yes, translations may be even longer than the original strings. 
So I don't think, arranging the events and the actions horizontally is an 
option.

> it might still be nice to show some sort of a summary for each item as well
> so that one can glance down the list and see what's what. a set of small
> icons in a second column in the list might do well. but that's a nicety
> that can probably be left till later =)

Yes, I had that in mind already -- some pixmaps in the listview or something 
like that.

See attached the current version -- please use that as a basis, because that 
one has some more meaningful variable names than the one before :]

Cheers
Carsten Pfeiffer
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["knotifywidgetbase.ui" (application/x-designer)]
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