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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Clipart Dialog II
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () olympusproject ! org>
Date:       2002-10-24 20:48:54
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On Thursday 24 October 2002 01:33, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 01:19:23PM -0600, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Thursday 24 October 2002 01:04, Thomas Zander wrote:
> > > the normal (KDELibs version) of the open dialogs should be copied
> > > if at all possible to give the user a familiar feeling.
> > > The current dialog does that better then your suggestion.
> >
> > this is not the same as a file dialog at all. the similarities are
> > cursory at best.
>
> They both select a file.

ask a user ... with a file dialog they will say they are opening a file and 
with the clipart they will likely say they are picking an image. to us 
developers its the same thing, but to users it isn't; they work in a task 
oriented manner and describe what they are doing by the task they are 
accomplishing.

btw, i just surveyed people here, showing both the file dialog and the clipart 
dialog and asking them to describe what they are doing in each. after they 
gave different answers, i then asked if what they were doing in the clipart 
dialog was the same as in the file dialog. they said no. in fact, one person 
said, "in one i'm picking an image to put right in the document and in the 
other i'm select a file to attach to the document. that's completely 
different." i then explained to them that it was actually the same thing and 
they were surprised. =)

> And since that is the main usage of the dialog I'm
> not sure why you think they should be seen as different.

they have different tasks. for instance, the cipart dialog hides the 
filesystem completely.

> My ideas on GUI is that as soon as one idea has proven itself to be useful
> (and thus has become familiar) it should be used elsewhere unless it can
> cause confusion.

agreed, but in this case many users won't see the similarity.

> I think the ideas (and method of working) of the file-open dialog _can_ be
> used for inserting clipart without causing confusion.
> Don't you agree?

it isn't about confusion, it's that if you are designing a dialog for 
inserting clip art, optimize it for that purpose. file dialog be damned. 
users will miss the corelation between them anyways.

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
    - Albert Einstein
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