Re: [Usability] User centered redesign of desktop preferences

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 13:46 +0100, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> Hi Maarten,
> 
> On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Maarten wrote:
> 
> > - Remove preferences that can be placed in applications
> 
> I think that's the wrong way around. Applications should have as little 
> preferences as possible, only those that can't be placed in the GNOME 
> control center! (For instance: network proxy settings.)

If a pref is app specific it should be in the app. You want the pref as
close to the context where the pref makes sense as possible. The control
center is for settings that multiple apps share, but even shared
settings can sometimes be e.g. in nautilus or other contextual
locations.

> Furthermore, by moving application prefs to the foreground, you 
> emphasize the application centric model, which is exactly what GNOME is 
> moving away from, in favour of focus on the content. Evince is a nice 
> example.

Evince is an application, it just happens that the same UI is suitable
for a few types of content. We shouldn't be adding video support to
evince or anything like that.

Havoc