Re: Message Boxes / 5:3 Ratio

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Calum Benson wrote:

> 
> Vlad Harchev wrote:
> 
> > > And would there also be a control center option for what every other
> > > type of application should do when it starts up?  Web browsers, mail
> > > clients, MP3 players, even the control center itself?  This would soon
> > > get out of hand, I think...
> > 
> >   Yes, that's my idea of configurable software. User just doesn't have to
> > configure every software package - only mostly used ones if s/he is
> > uncomforatble with something.
> 
> But if they're only configuring individual applications in this way, why
> not make the configuration in that application, rather than forcing them
> to look somewhere else other than the window they're working in and
> cluttering up the control center with even more controls in the process?

 In fact, I think that using ability to set GObject's properties from .gtkrc
file will be the only UI for setting application-specific options for a while
(since gtkrc allows to bind settings using patterns like "*Tree*" - a-la X
resources). So no special application-level configuration GUI is required -
just one more statement in your "~/.gtkrc.mine". Cheap, but powerfull.

> >   The most important thing is default directory to open files from or to save
> > files to for a given application. Properly designed file selector widget could
> > hide everything from programmer.
> 
> Very true, but again, to me default load/save directories are an
> application-level configuration, not a control center configuration as I
> think you were suggesting.

 I think that lastly visited dir in file-open or file-save dialog should be
recalled when opening dialog of the same type. No control center applet
needed. Sorry for confusion.
 
> > Once we have the code for that logic only in one place, we can do whatever 
> > we want with it - decide what the default should be, write (or not write) 
> > means for configuring things, etc.
> 
> I agree with that, that's just good software design :)  Putting
> everything you can think of in the control center is not, however...

 Control center has a hierarchical set of applets (i.e. tree of them, not flat
list of icons IIRC) - so we can burry specific applets in the 2nd or 3rd level
of that hierarchy - so it won't attract attention of the novice user, but
will be accessible by power users.


> Cheeri,
> Calum.
> 
> -- 
> CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
> mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
> http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771
> 
> Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems
> 
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 Best regards,
  -Vlad