mockup for user information interface

[Máirín Duffy]

Mark wrote:
>     What is the advantage of the edit in place over the current label + form
>     field model?
> 
>  
> well.. with edit in place you have it in a way better looking design and 
> is (in my opinion) alot more user friendly.

It's not enough to have an opinion. You should test both designs and see 
if that truly is the case. You can test paper mockups if you need to. 
(see http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030414.html). Check out 
www.betterdesktop.org for more information about user testing. You'll 
see in a few of those usability testing reports that things usability 
professionals thought might be more usable were actually less so in 
practice than they thought (and vice-versa).

> perhaps a edit in place with 
> a small icon bisides it that indicates that you can edit it. thinking 
> ahead is also possible instead of sticking with the current gnome HIG :) 

Brainstorming is fine but it is not a good idea to impose untested ideas 
in a piece meal fashion to achieve progress.

> (btw.. i looked over some pages in the current HIG and i can`t really 
> say that it`s a good example.. it looks like it`s from the windows 3.1 
> age (about 20 years ago)) things need to go forward if that`s a 
> improvement ofcause.

Did you look at the 2.0 HIG or the development version (there is a link 
to the development version on that page)

Looks and interactions are different. Just because the screenshots in 
the hig may show a very old GTK theme doesn't mean the principles aren't 
the same for the newer, nicer-looking GTK themes like clearlooks.

>     Do you see how in the current screen, the shortcuts are underlined? How
>     would a user know to hit Ctrl + U? Also, is the Ctrl + U key combination
>     bound to some other function? (probably)
> 
> 
> no.. lets just do that the same way it was done before. otherwise users 
> can browse through the fields with the TAB button on the keyboard.

What if the user already filled out the form and realized they 
misspelled something in the 3 field. You want them to cycle through the 
complete set of items with Tab? I don't think so.

Try setting up Orca (The gnome accessibility system) and try to use it 
for a day. The problem will become exceedingly clear to you then, I think.

> and some more stuff i might forgor to mention...
> in the current gnome (all apps) i hate it that it`s not as "feeling 
> natural" as i would like it to be and that alot parts are looking like: 
> "quickly done and it works so leave it alone" jobs (sorry if i offended 
> anyone) but now that the linux community is growing alot (specially 
> fedora) i think it`s time to spend some time in the user interfaces 
> aswell instead of only improving the coding (not that improving the 
> coding is wrong..

Sure, but let's spend time trying to improve the UIs that are in sorest 
need of help than those that are already pretty polished?

Can you list out the applications in particular you think need UI work?

absolutely not) gnome just misses alot of things that
> i miss and i try to improve it a bit by contibuting. in this case it`s a 
> mockup but i`ve also reported a few bugs and uasbillity issues (like 
> that thumbnails are way out of scale compared to icons and truncating 
> long text and another one.. don`t know which one it was)
> 
> this mockup might not really improve the way gnome works but it`s surely 
> improving the user settings panel.

But you admitted it really didn't improve anything, it was just a 
different look?

> o and i took the Live CD because my fc7 test 2 installation decided to 
> kill itself with printscreen (reported on bugzilla)

Makes sense.

~m