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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: BeOS and KDE compared: screenshots of trash and file context menu
From:       Max Howell <subscription () thingybobby ! vcisp ! net>
Date:       2003-01-28 18:24:03
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> As somebody thought that inline editing of filenames was kind of hidden
> behavior I did a small very unscientific test today. I went down to the
> computer lab for students studying Economics at Lund University and asked
> the students working there to rename  a file. None of them used the context
> menu (they used windows) or the the control key to do it. I also asked them
> if they knew some other way of renaming the file, and out of the 10 people
> I asked only two had another suggestion. And in both cases that involved
> opening the file with a program and doing "Save as".

You didn't understand my post, nor did you read it properly since I agreed 
with you and you thought I disagreed with you! Honestly.. :)

Anyway, I said it was hidden functionality, and it is. However most Windows 
users with any experience will have learnt to rename files this way so of 
course they will use this technique. It is hidden because it is not labelled 
in big letters "rename".

I still think this is good functionality. Uno agreed with me that the text is 
the label for the thing and not the thing itself and hopefully a newcomer 
would think this too.

> I think the risk of misclicking is quite small.

I agree, it will inevitably happen to us all and we'd get annoyed but there's 
always a toss-up between a good feature and a usability degradation. If the 
file is selected and the text is clicked then I propose you should be able to 
rename the file. Not only is this fairly intuitive but Windows users will 
expect it.

No doubt I've missed out on some glaring usability issue though :) Others' 
thoughts?

Also, well done to Uno on the usability tests, but didn't they suggest that 
nobody used the select-the-text-to-rename functionality? Perhaps we should 
avoid using this function then afterall. Actually, I wouldn't be too 
surprised if people only discover this in Windows when they accidently click 
the text rather than the icon and then go "oh you can rename that way too!" 

Yet again I'm in two minds about this, as said there are some perfectly good 
ways to rename files already and you don't have to rename files very often 
either.

Max
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