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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: [KDE Usability] Users cannot find where to "safely remove" USB
From:       Dotan Cohen <dotancohen () gmail ! com>
Date:       2010-04-04 20:07:41
Message-ID: s2w880dece01004041307m4aaec748v766ac96f00cf7c31 () mail ! gmail ! com
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> Adding a context menu in the device notifier is not a very wise idea, in my
> opinion. It would lead to a very strange experience...not to mention what I
> would presume to be a non-obvious "solution".
>

What would be strange about that experience?

Why do you think that the solution is non-obvious, when this is
exactly what users are trying to do to safely remove their media?


> Adding an extra item merely to eject the device is also a very bad approach.
> We should try to avoid as much as possible, adding additional and
> unnecessary items to this view, as it's free space is confined enough.
>

Although I agree that _unnecessary_ items should not be added to the
view, I have these counter arguments:
1) Ejecting the medium is not unnecessary. It is a common use case.
2) There are already unnecessary items. For instance, on the wife's
computer, there are items for "Download with Digikam" and also
"Download with Gwenview". Would you not agree that two applications
for downloading the files are unnecessary?
3) If the free space is so rare that adding a single, important menu
item is problematic then that is a sign that the space usage is a bad
design to begin with.


> I think at all costs, we should try to avoid doing any of the 2
> aforementioned options

At all costs? Really? You think that having an intuitive UI is less
important then... whatever disadvantages you see in those
implementations? (I personally still don't see disadvantages, but I
contend that is opinion)


> ...hopefully the eject button being added to the
> places view can help clear up some confusion.
>

It won't, because of the two users that knew to eject from Dolphin
(and therefore would be the only ones who would see the eject button
there), they now both know about the eject button in the Device
Notifier and _still_ find it unintuitive. In fact, less than an hour
ago, one called me to ask where is that eject button that I showed him
only _yesterday_. And no, he is not an idiot. He is a Microsoft
engineer (and uses Kubuntu at home!).

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://bido.com
http://what-is-what.com
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