Re: [gnome-love] GNOME user environment brainstorming

[Charles Voelger <cvoelger dweasel com>]

Hi I am new to this list and fairly new to gnome. I've only be reading
the list for two days but I thought this was my opertunity to jump in.


On 24 May 2001 15:48:04 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> This is a magic folder along the lines of current ~/Nautilus. Calling
> it "Start Here" for now. Our screenshot is of a Red Hat incarnation
> with a couple RH-specific features. It would contain things such as:

I think this is a brilliant idea, but I do not like the proposed changes to the 
control center.  Personally I have always felt the laytout of the current control
center to be its strongest points. Modifying it to look like Windows Control Panel is 
a bad idea for several reasons:

1) simply making something look like another successful product does not mean it will be 
equally usable.

2) Windows control panel is a pain precisely because it uses dialogs.  It is not consistant
across all control panel applets and requires extensive dialog switching to find what 
you want.

3) the structure that arises from the tree in control center would be lost.

to elaborate on point 3 I would suggest reorganizeing control centers layout to a more
intuitive system rather than abandoning it for an icon based one.  Perhaps have catagories
and make each control center applet reside within a catagory, for instance instead of 
having a "desktop" cataogory that is seperate from the window managers catagory.  have all the
properties for appearance flow from the same branch, and then a branch for window behavior (to
cover focusing, and placement...) sound, document types, session, peripherals, and so on and so forth.

I think that if control center were simply laid out in an intuitive way it would be far more useful than an 
icon based system
on the Ximian Support IRC Channel the number one question I have seen in the few weeks I've been there is 
about finding a 
configuration option.  If the control center were to become icons and dialogs this would not in anyway aid 
someone in finding
what they want, on the other hand if the menus were more descriptive while one is looking at one applet it is 
simple and easy
to continue to glance down the side and see what your other options are.

Furthermore, with the current tree view in the control center it would be nice to consider adding it to the 
sidebar in nautilus...thus 
integrating the configuration into a nice consistant interface, consistant especially if the help browser is 
replaced by nautilus.

Just my 2 cents,
charles