Re: [Usability] logout dialog redux

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 07Dec2001 04:11AM (-0500), Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org> writes: 
> >   http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61539
> > 
> > Throws all of this out the window, moving from one "leave gnome" action
> > button and dialogue to multiple entries in the foot menu (or a submenu as
> > described in the bug, or a submenu of a submenu, as described and refuted in
> > the bug).
> 
> That may be nicer, yeah. Harder to implement though, you have to get
> that info into the session manager. ;-) Not all that hard I guess.
> 

I'm for the menu solution. I don't think it's that much harder to
implement, and it's really only an implementation detail that these
actions are related in any way.


As for your proposed dialog, the main thing wrong with it is that it's
totally unlike other dialogs in the UI. The buttons are above the rest
of the dialog content, thwarting the normal top-to-bottom,
left-to-right flow of the eye. The buttons are also laid out
vertically, which is harder to scan than a horizontal
layout. Independent of these specific issues, it's not a good idea to
make one dialog look really different, because users will waste time
wondering why it's different.


I admit that laying it out the normal way might result in something
that looks like it has too many buttons across the bottom. But that's
because it does. :-) The log out action was too overloaded in the
first place.