Re: [Usability] Re: [Epiphany] epiphany toolbar/bookmarks

[Roberto Rosselli Del Turco <rosselli ling unipi it>]

mpeseng tin it wrote:
> > 1) that the ephy-bookmarks-unhappy are just a "very low part of user base";
> >
> > 2) that the new bookmarks system is an improvement for most users.
> >
> > With regard to 1) I can't but wonder how is it possible to say that 
> > since 99% of all browser users (on most platforms) are used to 
> > hyerarchical bookmark menus. Perhaps it's not optimal, perhaps is under-
> >
> > and misused, but this is what people expect to find in a web browser: 
> > you can easily move a Window user from IE to Mozilla (and then perhaps
>
>
> > to Linux altogether), but I doubt that new and ex-Windows users would be
> >
> > less than puzzled by a completely different bookmarking method *without*
> >
> > having the chance to import their bookmarks and getting on thanks to a
>
>
> > compatible system.
>
>
> This is no unsubstantiated, I tried to explain the reason I think hierarich
> way of organizing bookmarks does not work, in the first part of my mail.

With "unsubstantiated" I didn't mean "not well put" or "vague" or 
"confusing". I got your point, I understand your motivations, I 
appreciate the idea of trying something new: I only wanted to say a word 
of caution wrt to this specific issue.

> The reason that IE ship a hierarchic bookmarks system does not mean 99%
> of the users actually use the hierarchy.
> In my limited experience non technical IE users:
> - Do not use bookmarks at all
> - Have a few of them not organized at all
> - Very rarely they have one level folders
>
> Which is quite similar to the situation where people save their files either
> on the desktop, either in the Document folder, still not using the hierarchy
> at all.

I concur with this, but there are also some ("technical"?) users who 
have their bookmarks, sometimes lots of them, neatly organized in the 
traditional way. If you move on to consider present Linux and GNOME 
users, you may want to consider all of them "technical", in a way.

> Additionally it seem to be proved that people hardly grok hierarchies and
> that multiple submenus are really difficult to use. (Am I wrong ?)

Perhaps people don't like (menu) hyerarchies, and perhaps they are 
inherently hard to use after you start adding more than one level of 
submenus, but that's something they *know*, and know well, because this 
is the way not only all browsers  work, but many OSs as well. Heck, to 
launch XCDroast on my distro I have to dig on four submenus: 
Applications -> Archiving -> CD Burning -> XCDroast. Same goes for many 
apps, etc. The fact that this is wrong on a usability level doesn't make 
the fact that people know how to use menus and submenus less true.

With a topic based bookmark system, OTOH, you introduce an abstraction 
level that *could* be not well received both by the newbie and the power 
user, for very different reasons. This is my humble opinion and I'm 
probably wrong, still with Epiphany going to be GNOME 2.4 default 
browser better be sure ...

> As I said my experience is limited, maybe I live out of the real world ;)

Follow the white rabbit... ;=)

> But talking with other people that try to watch real users seem to confirm
> this situation.
> I dont have money or time to do real user tests... so this sort of observations
> are the only data on what I can base my analysis.

This is what I meant with "unsubstantiated" :) but IMHO this is an issue 
for all of the GNOME project.

> It's also not true that you cant import your bookmarks. There are problems
> with multiple levels hierarchies (which for what I can see is a very very
> corner case for real users), but I think it's possible to improve even in
> that case.

I know I'm going to say something stupid, but couldn't you just merge 
the two systems? the best of both worlds, for all users ...

> Did you notice the IHMO ?

Yes, consider this and my previous message also stamped with IMHO 
everywhere :)

> There are a few things that make that opinion, but only user test could
> prove it:
>
> - Our design avoid deep hierarchies and submenus, which is teoretically
> good from an usability point of view
> - Several people, me included, started to use bookmarks only with epiphany
> system.
> - While designing the system indipendently we ended with something similar
> to what apple did, and I guess they did user test.
>
> While it's true that I cant prove the new system to be an improvement for
> everyone, but just describe what I think are the positive points of it and
> explain what reasons are beyond our choices, it's also true that gnomedesktop
> discussions prove nothing, and they dont even try to build a rationale against
> what we did.

If you take out of the equation the inevitable trolls, current 
gnomedesktop readers are GNOME users: I don't think that it's right to 
ignore their feedback, however badly articulated that be. Don't you 
think that their expectations are at least as important as those of 
current IE users?

> If we followed them, now we would be back at GNOME 1, and we would be using
> Velocity instead of Nautilus :)

Funny that you mention Nautilus: while still reading the ml and 
following its development, I've given up on Nautilus for the moment and 
switched to Rox :( But that's for another thread ...

BTW Velocity is too young and small a project to be compared to Nautilus.

Ciao

--
Roberto Rosselli Del Turco      e-mail:	rosselli at cisi.unito.it
Dipartimento di Scienze			rosselli at ling.unipi.it
del Linguaggio			Then spoke the thunder	DA
Universita' di Torino		Datta: what have we given?  (TSE)

  Hige sceal the heardra,     heorte the cenre,
  mod sceal the mare,       the ure maegen litlath.  (Maldon 312-3)