[Xfce4-commits] r16004 - xfce4-panel/trunk/plugins/launcher

[Olivier Fourdan]

Hey Brian,

I guess you are right, it's better w/out...

Cheers,
Olivier.

On Mon, 2005-06-20 at 14:03 -0700, Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
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> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> > Olivier Fourdan wrote:
> > 
> >>Hey Jasper,
> >>
> >>That was one the greatest thing in Xfce launcher.... :(
> >>
> >>Too bad.
> > 
> > I agree with Olivier, this was really a very handy feature.
> 
> I guess I'm just not really seeing the problem this "feature" solves.
> Or rather, I'm not seeing why this is actually a good solution to any
> (perceived?) problem.
> 
> (As an aside, saying that that was one of the greatest things in the
> launcher sounds like a big slap in the launcher's anthrpomorphic face,
> to me.)
> 
> Anyway, perceived problems:
> 
> * People being impatient and/or people not knowing that a single click
> is all that's needed.  Well that's their problem.  When you double click
> the icon and two instances of your app appears, you learn pretty quickly
> what you're doing wrong.
> 
> * People who have trouble using a mouse (because they're computer
> newbies and aren't familiar with them).  Tough.  Live and learn.  I'm
> all about educating people and bringing their knowledge up higher, not
> about dumbing things down to the lowest common denominator.  What, are
> we Linspire now?  YMMV.
> 
> * User feedback that something has "happened".  I would think that the
> visual indication that the button pushed in and then popped back out
> would be enough.  After all, that seems to work for every other button
> in any UI I've ever seen.  Startup notification, when it's more widely
> supported, will make this even better (yeah, I know, half-vapor until
> then).  Anyway, it really should be the opposite: if there's an error
> and something *doesn't* happen, then the user should be explicitly
> notified[1].
> 
> * People who have trouble using a mouse (due to physical hand problems).
>  This is really the only valid case I can see, and yet I find it hard to
> accept a need to cripple the user interface for what is likely a very
> very small percentage of users.
> 
> The only buttons that I *ever* see go insensitive after a click are on
> some web forms.  And the reason for that isn't really usability: it's a
> consequence of network latency, and the fact that extra clicks can
> actually cause problems that are difficult (or time-consuming or costly)
> to resolve.  And those buttons are only meant to be used *once*.  The
> entire point of having the launcher buttons on the panel is so they're
> accessible to be used often (or at least more often than 'once').
> 
> 	-brian
> 
> [1] I'll also make note of the case where an app crashes before it shows
> its first window.  That sucks, but I don't see the panel as the place to
> "fix" this problem.  In an ideal world, all GUI apps should notify the
> user when they crash, similarly to how GNOME apps do, though it would be
> nice if this could be done in a tookit-agnostic manner.  Actually, in
> the time it took me to write that last sentence, I came up with a
> non-nasty-hack method of doing that, without modifying the application,
> though it incurs an extra-process overhead for each GUI app.  Eh.  Too
> lazy to think more right now.
> 
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