[Nautilus-list] Re: UI Design

[<mitch nuclear physics gatech edu>]

	the main problem is that things are spread out all over. A new
user has to go a hunt for everything. The real problem comes when a person
doesn't know what he or she is hunting for. A experienced windows user
will at least have some sort of general idea of what he or she is looking
for. However, a nonexperienced user like ma or pa would be totally lost
without a clue. All ma and pa know is that this computer has a cdrom,
floppy, can talk to other computers, and can store data. They need
something blatantly obvious or intuitive. Now I know a lot of people may
downplay the importance of a UI being intuitive but it shouldn't be. It's
the number one reason for success. When one downplays it's importance,
they are really showing their laziness for designing a good UI. It's tough
to put real thought into a UI and make it intuitive. It's must simpler to
just throw up some menus, submenus, and some options. It makes it straight
forward and easy for the developer but not for the user. In order to write
a good UI, there will need to be some compromise between the nautilus
team, the gnome team, and ximian. In other words, nautilus needs to play
on gnome and gnome needs to play on nautilus. Adding a menu panel with
icons of drives, network,common directories like users home, Documents, 
etc... is just a start. There will need to be
other things such as clear desktop actions. There ought to be some central
button, icon, panel, or something that screams obviously that this is the
button you want to hit to use the computer. Once that is done, it should
open nautilus up with a window that gives options for any drive, network,
common folders like documents, users home, ximian setup tools, etc... The
other big thing is that there needs to be a more fluid way of moving
between su and a user. What good does nautilus do if I'm in a directory
that my user can access or can't write to? If the user doesn't have access
to delete a file or write a file, there should be some type of su password
popup window to allow the event. Anyway, I know I'm probably rambling on
to most of you but these types of things really should be tought out well
before nautilus and gnome get much further along. I realize the current
gnome and nautilus can't just be changed overnight nor should it change
for gnome 1.x. HOwever, I think these are some serious things that should
be thought out for gnome 2.0. There is still time to get the UI right and
intuitive for gnome 2.0. If it's done correctly and well, gnome 2.0 could
be a huge hit even to the non computer dorks.