Re: [Usability]Embedding capplets in application preferences

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

On Thu, 2002-11-21 at 11:46, Tommi Komulainen wrote:

> Providing a simple button that starts the capplet would be somewhere in
> the middle, it would provide easy access and make it more obvious these
> are not application-specific settings.
> 
> Or am I just confused to think there's any problem here?

No, I agree it's potentially confusing, but I don't think anybody's
thought it through yet... or at least, the HIG team haven't :)

IIRC, MacOS 8/9 just pops up the relevant capplet instead of an
app-specific dialog whenever it's required.  (I'm not sure what MacOSX
does.)  E.g. if you select Internet Preferences in your email client,
you get the MacOS email control panel, not a client-specific one.

I don't think this approach completely avoids the confusion, but I think
it's better than embedding capplets into app-specific Preferences
dialogs that may even contain other controls as well.  At least this
way, if the user is already familiar with the capplet, they stand a
reasonable chance of recognising it as being the system-wide thing they
used before.  IMHO, it also gives a more seamless experience than just
embedding a button into your dialog saying "take me to this capplet". 
Especially as there are probably situations where you wouldn't have
anywhere to put the button anyway.

Giving capplets a distinct look from regular dialogs would help this
approach too... we kind of do that already, by using icons more
liberally than we would in regular dialogs, but maybe we need to think
more about guidelines for a definite capplet 'look'.

Cheeri,
Calum.
 
-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems