Re: [HIG] Mini-Guidelines content

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

At 5:51 PM +0100 8/1/01, colin z robertson wrote:
> I'm wondering what sort of areas we're looking to cover in the GNOME
> 2.0 Mini-Guidelines document. Here's a suggested list of things to
> include, all of it up for discussion.
>
> - Menus
>   - Principles
>   - Standard Menus
> - Dialogs
>   - Principles
>   - Standard Dialogs
> - Layout and Aesthetics
> - Terminology
> - Default Keybindings
>
> Is there anything else that needs to be included? Conversely, is there
> anything on this list that we should actually avoid for this document?

I would add a general introductory note about why usability is a good 
idea and covering some general principles.  But then again, I'm 
already working on such a note, so I'm slightly biased.  :)

Glancing through a couple of the existing style guides...

I think a brief discussion of "behavior" (mouse behavior, app 
feedback, keyboard focus, and similar items) is important and should 
be considered as well; I'm not sure how much is appropriate for the 
mini-guidelines, but we should add it to the list.

It would probably be a good idea to have at least a very brief note 
on controls: when to use a radio button, when to use checkboxes, 
pop-up menus, that sort of thing.

Folks who have done HI guidelines before: are there any areas that in 
particular tend to be horrible fields of quicksand?

In general, I think we should ideally concentrate our effort 
primarily on the areas where current GNOME apps are the worst.  I'll 
glance through the Sun and MIT reports and see if I can find anything 
striking, and play a bit with some apps as well.  Anyone have any 
specific suggestions on that?

> Also we need to know what sort of timescale we're looking at. Does
> anyone have an up-to-date schedule for GNOME 2.0 development, and can
> anyone translate that into a deadline for our work? The only schedule
> that I know of is
> http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gnome-2-0-list/2001-May/msg00019.html

AFAIK from a couple of the hackers, release is still planned for late 
this year/early next.  I would think that it'd be very good for us to 
have at least a draft for comment by mid-October (i.e. 10 weeks 
away).  Is that too fast?

Adam
--