Re: [Usability] Can the GNOME desktop survive an encounter with my parents?

[Vidar Braut Haarr <vhaarr gmail com>]

On 8/26/05, Jason Hoover <jasonhoover verizon net> wrote:
> My! What an interesting study! There's quite a few bugs here.

Thank you :-)

> On Fri, 2005-08-26 at 00:18 +0200, Vidar Braut Haarr wrote:
> > 2. Right-clicking on the pathbar elements in Nautilus does not give a
> > context menu for the selected path element.
> 
> This could probably be considered a bug too. But I'm not too sure what
> you would expect here. Open in new window versus what exactly? Shouldn't
> be re-naming folders from there, just using it for navigation. Can't
> delete parent folders because you're in a child folder.

Like I said, these notes come much from observing how they used GNOME.
I think my father was looking for a way to view a slideshow of the
folder. He was in /home/dadsname/Images/<some folder>, right-clicked
on <some folder> and probably expected a "Show a slideshow of this
folder" or something equivalent. Frankly, I have no idea.

> > 4. Wants to move the Top Panel to the bottom. Clicks it and drags but
> > gets no visual indication that he's dragging anything.
> 
> There's actually a massive delay when the panel is moved to re-locate
> and re-size all of the icons.

Yes, the problem is that he gets no "outline" as he drags it, like you
get on windows if you drag the bottom "panel" there (what is it called
on Windows again?). Try clicking on the middle of the top panel and
drag the mouse down to the bottom of the screen. You get no visual
indication that you're dragging anything before the panel suddenly
snaps from top to bottom.

> > 9. Prior to letting him use the computer, I installed smeg to
> > customize the Applications menu, removing alot of silly applications
> > that he will never use. Later, he finds smeg himself, and tries to
> > remove the following items:
> >  * Places-> Desktop, Computer, Network, Connect to Server
> >  * The entire System menu.
> > But finds that it's not possible, for unknown reasons.
> 
> Unless I'm mistaken, Smeg (ugh, what an awful name) is an Ubuntu thing.
> A thread relating to it's development is here:
> 
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=40219&page=3&pp=10

Smeg really isn't the issue here; the fact that you can't remove these
things is. I joined #gnome wondering if it was an issue with Smeg or
if it technically wasn't possible. I think it was Luis who said it
most certainly was possible if you used the powerful configuration
utility otherwise known as 'gcc' :-P

> > 17. Mom opens Thunderbird to send some e-mails. She minimizes
...
> > 4, but only needs 3. He rightclicks on the 4th desktop and clicks
> > "Remove from panel". This, of course, removes the entire applet,
> > confusing him again. I add it again and point him to the properties
> > dialog where he can adjust the number of virtual desktops, reducing it
> > to 3.
> 
> Hmm. I can see how that would be some dangerously ambiguous language. I
> wonder what the others here would think of changing "Remove from panel"
> to something like "Remove launcher" or "Remove applet"? Though I think
> for now it came down to a mis-understanding of the definition of
> "panel".

The definition of "panel" is not the problem here. The fact that he
thinks each desktop within the switcher is a seperate entity on the
panel (and thus he should be able to remove only one of them by using
"Remove from panel") is the problem.

> My input probably isn't worth .02c, but I hope you might find some of it
> helpful/re-assuring. There's some really good points and things of note
> there.

Thanks for taking the time to comment on my random scrabble. It seems
to me you mistunderstood alot of my notes, but that most surely is a
result of them being notes and not something I reviewed with care
before sending to the list.

-- 
Vidar Braut Haarr
"Programmers don't die, they
just GOSUB without RETURN."