Re: Preferences [Was: a whole lot of other things, too]

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Sun, 2002-04-28 at 01:32, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> On 27Apr2002 04:53PM (-0700), Seth Nickell wrote:
> > 
> > 3) KDE needs such a control-center monstrosity because they have Waaaay
> > too many preferences and categories. We have about 15 preference pages,
> > each of which is fairly small, most of which do not have tabs. With the
> > current number of preference pages I would say categorization of the
> > GNOME preferences is almost unnecessary. I plan to do some
> > categorization anyway, because I expect the number of items to grow.
> 
> Dude, with 15 items the hierarchy hurts more than it helps. With that
> few items, the easiest way to find something is to have a list of all
> the items at once. I would say with that few items, there is even room
> for growth before imposing hierarchy has a net benefit.

I agree with 15 items. As I said, I expect the number of items to grow
somewhat, though obviously we'll try to control it. I expect things will
stabilize at about 25 items. At 25 items I think its worth having *some*
sub-categories, perhaps not so many as I've described.

One idea would be to resist categorizing important/common items, such as
Background and Fonts.

The way MacOS/X handles things is interesting here because the
categories are "weak". You can see everything on the screen, but there
is some rough grouping that can be helpful. Maybe we should consider
something like that, dunno.

-Seth