Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus user testing at MIT

[Nicolas Mailhot <Nicolas Mailhot email enst fr>]

Le ven, 05 jan 2001 14:33:41, Reinout van Schouwen a écrit :
> Hello Nicolas,
> 
> On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> 
> > This way it may work. However it does make the hourglass
> a
> > useless launch indicator, which was my point.
> 
> Yes, but I think we can agree that this is a bad idea
> anyhow, having read the other replies.

Unfortunately that is not the consensus with most ex-windoze
users:((

> * unlike throbbers, difficult to see state of all  windows
at 
> a glance. Remember that you still have the active/inactive
color 
> indication on the window title bars. 

Wich means *nothing* about the app state, just the windows
focus state.
A window can be inacive without waiting for a mode dialog

> I'm using the Gnome version that came with Mandrake 7.2 
> and it's definitely in there. :-)

'cos Mandrake is using xalf. Just try it with xalf
uninstalled. (and IMHO xalf is more a hack than a definitive
solution).

> So I don't know if this is some kind of Mandrake-specific
> enhancement
> (more like something that came from Helix?!) but it would
> be smart to
> incorporate this into the next Gnome release, if it's not
> already in.
> 
> > launching state
> 
> - see above
> 
> > busy state
> 
> - 'wait' mouse cursor
> 
> > idle state
> 
> - nothing special(?)
> 
> > connecting state (for network apps)
> 
> - throbber
> 
> > question state (window stuck until a dialog been
> closed...)
> 
> Do you mean modal dialogs?

Yes.

> > On the other hand, title bars/task list entries are
> clearly
> > associated with *one* window all the time, a lot of them
> can
> > be consulted simultaneously, so putting the hints there
> > would be the right thing IMHO.
> 
> If you want to put indicators of all the mentioned states
> in the tasklist
> entries, the already small screen space that's available
> would become even
> more crowded.

Since these states are more or less exclusive, I was
thinking about a non binary throber : i.e. a throbber with
more than 2 (idle/connecting) states.

Less clutter than x different indicators, and no more
difficult than x cursor states. 

xalf does this for startup -- you can expand this for all
usefull states. And putting it in the task list and the
title bar is good since a task list is no more than the list
of the same info that title bars already provide.

> Adding an extra indicator to the titlebar could be a good
> idea - I'm not quite sure about that.

Since the whole point of the title bar is provide more info
about a window, why not ?

-- 
Nicolas