From: <jk...@cs...> - 2003-03-27 08:10:45
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> Now, you decide you want to view several articles/links/sections from > each. So, going to Site A and Site B in sequence, you open a couple > articles in new tabs from each. Under the current Behavior, this leads > to the following layout: > > Site A | Site B | Site A Article 1 | Site A Article 2 | Site B Article 1 > __________________________________________________________________________ > > Wouldn't it make more sense to end up with your links organized in > relevance to their context at time of opening, as following? > > Site A | Site A Article 1 | Site A Article 2 | Site B | Site B Article 1 That's odd. I'm just upgraded from 1.2 to 1.3.3 and I'm stuck in "open after current tab" mode, which I desperatly want to get out of. I've used galeon for several for several years now, and to have the tab behavior change radically like this is disconcerting (and by "disconcerting" I mean "absolutely annoying"). And it's not just tab behavior that annoys me. In all galeon's UI in it's drive for "simplicity" has become crippled (like many GNOME apps which have taken on this fool's errand). Galeon now always loads the homepage on startup, regardless of the settings of "on new window". Severity: Annoying -- Won't fix. Pasting a URL into the window (ie copy a url to the X clipboard and then middle click in the galeon window) used to load the URL in that window. Now it spawns a new window with the URL in it. This isn't the old behavior and probably isn't what the user intended (its's defintaly not what I intended any of the times I've done in the past 3 years.) Severity: Annoying Smartbookmarks always have those freakin' huge dropdown buttons. This is also known as "smartbookmarks save history". I never liked it because I never use it. I use my google smartbookmark way too much. I'd like to disable it. Severity: Annoying -- Probably won't fix. Bookmark Editor's folder dblclick behavior is confusing, highly annoying, and flies in the face of every other tree-widget on the planet. Since the advent of the tree-widget, dblclicking anywhere on folder's line would open the folder. This was good since the line is a pretty good target for the mouse to hit. Under galeon (and only under galeon) dblclicking the line pops up the properties dialog. (Which I'd like to point out is consistent with the dblclicking of a bookmark.) To open the folder, the user must take carefull aim at approximatly a 10-5 pixel triangluar target, which is needless to say, hard to hit on the first try. The proper behavior would be to restore the worldwide standard of dblclicking folders opens them, and remove any dblclick behavior for bookmarks, or perhaps restore the dblclick bookmark opens it. (In a new window if there are already multiple windows open, but in the existing window if there is only one window open at the time. The rational behind this is that the bookmark editor dialog isn't logically associated with any browser window since changes in the editor effect all the browser windows regardless of which window was used to launch the editor. If the user is browsing in multiple windows, the probably wouldn't mind if a new window was opened, but opening a new window when there's only one probably isn't what was intended. (People browse in different ways, a good program should recognize this, and should adjust itself to the user, not the user to the program.)) Severity: Severe -- Fix the damn callbacks Gestures are stuck on, so context menus in the page are are sluggish to appear and sometimes take multiple tries. I've never been a big fan of gestures, they always struck me a bit of fad. Sure they can be useful for certain apps (ie mentor graphics), but in a mouse-and-keyboard centeric app (like a browser) they just seem like trendy flash. That said, Right clicking sometimes results the mouse being moved silghtly (or aleast it does on my laptop) which results in a gesture being interpreted instead of the menu appearing. Also sometimes (and it isn't clear why) right clicking sometimes results in the gesture mouse pointer (the pencil) being stuck on. The mouse isn't usable until the pencil is cleared by another right click. Severity: Moderate -- Fix the "sticking pencil", improve responsiveness if possible. Font selection dialog is missing many fonts. Those that do appear are usually the wrong version of that font. This is a general GNOME mistake. For instance, I have probably 3 "helvetica"s (including both adobe-helvetica and ms-helvetica (both vector-based)), but NONE appear on the list. Umm... Severity: Severe -- There needs to be a new font widget. The old one was byzantine unless you wanted a very specific font, the new single selection dropdown is often misses fonts and those that it does find are often the wrong ones. -- Probably not galeon, but galeon should work around it. There's no way to set plugins. It used to be Preferences|plugins, but that's gone. Severity: Severe -- gconftool isn't a solution. Now for a general comment to head off the the whole "well you could use gconf and add the key 'xyzzy'..." crowd. Telling the user to edit the registry to set a value that was previously controlled by a dialog is not a solution. Sending a luser in with a tool that could easily silently break stuff severely is not a good. The registry is sensitive to values, and there's no room for error. Keys are undocumented in the user docs and often aren't even documented in the the devel docs. Often someone will simply say "set xyzzy", but the values won't necessarily be obvious. Does this take a number or a string? What's the are the valid values for the string (ie "Is it 'center' or 'centre'?")? Contantly shoving people off to the registry eventually leads to an almost emacs like experience. It's never configured quite right, and you know you can fix it, but you have no idea how. Even if you did, it wouldn't be nearly as easy as it should be. Also, if people keep questioning about if you can change something, and the answer that keeps coming back is "gconf", then maybe you do need a dialgo for this. Look at mozilla's preference dialog. Lots of options, but not overwhelming. Galeon's used to be like that, but it's just a butchered to the point to being marginally useful. > Please, if we can't have a preference for this behavior, consider > changing the default to "Open New Tabs after current tab". NOO Don't! "New tabs at end" is the one true tab mode! :) --------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Endymion MailMan. http://www.endymion.com/products/mailman/ |
From: Tony H. <to...@re...> - 2003-03-27 13:40:49
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In <200...@cs...>, jk...@cs... wrote: > Smartbookmarks always have those freakin' huge dropdown buttons. This > is also known as "smartbookmarks save history". I never liked it > because I never use it. I use my google smartbookmark way too much. > I'd like to disable it. Severity: Annoying -- Probably won't fix. You can turn these off I think, but I don't know how, probably another gconf thing. Galeon 1.2 recently became uninstallable in Debian unstable so I switched to "galeon-snapshot" ie 1.3. Somehow the package maintainer managed to get all the paths and gconf keys renamed to "galeon-snapshot" instead of "galeon", so it used quite a different lot of settings from 1.2. Then I read on the Galeon website that "Galeon 2" was under development, and already had all the features from 1.2. Great, I followed the instructions to download it from CVS, but it just turned out to be 1.3. At least it seems a bit more stable than the Debian snapshot. This one uses "galeon" in its gconf keys, so uses some settings fron Galeon 1.2. The dropdown buttons on the smart toolbar have gone, but so has the zoom widget above. I think the buttons are useful (could they be replaced by tab completion perhaps?), but they're too big. Probably the fault of the theme. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk |
From: Michael L T. <to...@ch...> - 2003-03-27 15:57:08
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On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 06:40, Tony Houghton wrote: > In <200...@cs...>, jk...@cs... wrote: > > You can turn these off I think, but I don't know how, probably another > gconf thing. Galeon 1.2 recently became uninstallable in Debian unstable > so I switched to "galeon-snapshot" ie 1.3. Somehow the package > maintainer managed to get all the paths and gconf keys renamed to > "galeon-snapshot" instead of "galeon", so it used quite a different lot > of settings from 1.2. > > Then I read on the Galeon website that "Galeon 2" was under development, > and already had all the features from 1.2. Great, I followed the > instructions to download it from CVS, but it just turned out to be 1.3. > At least it seems a bit more stable than the Debian snapshot. Yes Galeon 1.3.3 is Galeon 2 > > This one uses "galeon" in its gconf keys, so uses some settings fron > Galeon 1.2. The dropdown buttons on the smart toolbar have gone, but so > has the zoom widget above. I think the buttons are useful (could they be > replaced by tab completion perhaps?), but they're too big. Probably the > fault of the theme. You can put the zoom control on the toolbar by going edit->toolbar. Michael -- Michael L Torrie <to...@ch...> |
From: Tony H. <to...@re...> - 2003-03-27 17:10:28
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In <104...@is...>, Michael L Torrie wrote: > On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 06:40, Tony Houghton wrote: > > > > Then I read on the Galeon website that "Galeon 2" was under development, > > and already had all the features from 1.2. Great, I followed the > > instructions to download it from CVS, but it just turned out to be 1.3. > > At least it seems a bit more stable than the Debian snapshot. > > Yes Galeon 1.3.3 is Galeon 2 I soon realised that, but I think it's stretching things a bit to say all the features from Galeon 1.2 have been implemented. > You can put the zoom control on the toolbar by going edit->toolbar. So you can, I thought it would be something I'd have to use gconf-editor for. The dialogue box could be improved IMO, by letting you select more than one item at a time, and move them by drag & drop, but these are probably GTK+/GNOME issues. PS I've just realised that 1.3 doesn't suffer from bug 67798, which is nice :-). It got on my nerves on a daily basis and looked like it was never going to be fixed in the GTK+1 version. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk |
From: Charles E T. IV <to...@mi...> - 2003-03-27 14:14:35
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On 27 Mar 2003 13:58:22 +0200 Tommi Komulainen <tom...@ik...> wrote: > Urgh, that's because there's another setting (hidden in gconf) for > behavior on startup (which is ever so slightly different from new page) > Probably some relic from galeon1.2. Definitely will fix one way or the > other, probably just remove the confusing extra pref. I can't try Galeon 1.3 for the moment because of one of its dependencies, but are you seriously saying that there's no way outside of gconf to change whether or not Galeon tries to load a web page on startup? > With > gestures you can, if you want to, get your mouse more efficient. > Instead of aiming at the little back or close buttons, you can use big > wide gestures instead (sound familiar with your example of the bookmark > editor?) That's no excuse for a hard-to-hit button. Not everyone uses a tradiitional mouse. My main computer is a Thinkpad 770Z - which comes with a trackpoint. Trying to do mouse gestures with a trackpoint is amusing at best. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- * Charles Taylor <to...@mi...> * Chemistry teacher, Linux enthusiast! -------------------------------------------------------------------- * College Chemistry website: http://home.mindspring.com/~charletiv/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
From: Jon-o A. <jon...@ma...> - 2003-03-27 14:45:25
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On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 02:11:59AM +0000, jk...@cs... spake thusly: > And it's not just tab behavior that annoys me. In all galeon's UI in it'= s drive > for "simplicity" has become crippled (like many GNOME apps which have tak= en on > this fool's errand). I agree entirely with every single point you've made here. And despite the reply stating that it's because of the galeon 1.2 prefs, I never had gestures enabled... It's really odd. I don't think anyone's complaining that the program's not perfect - it IS unstable, and a work in progress. The problem that I and many others have is that galeon (and the whole gnome team) seems obsessed with taking legitimate requests for features that USED TO BE THERE, and obviously were used quite heavily by some people, and dismissing them entirely. I won't get too much into the whole gnome-simplification debate, other than to say that even if it's wonderful for new users, or those intimidated by too many options, it's real impediment for those who use the thing daily and want to customize it to suit their way of using the computer, instead of vice versa. I'm sure I'm not the only one that found that the galeon 1.2 preferences screen made perfect sense, and it seems that there are many of us missing features in 1.3 that don't plan to be fixed. I wonder if it might be time for a fork.... --=20 Jon-o Addleman Curious about the PGP attachments in my e-mail?=20 see http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/scotmid/pgpweb/pgpintro.shtml to find out why they're there! |
From: Tony H. <to...@re...> - 2003-03-27 17:24:07
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In <200...@re...>, Jon-o Addleman wrote: > I don't think anyone's complaining that the program's not perfect - it > IS unstable, and a work in progress. The problem that I and many others > have is that galeon (and the whole gnome team) seems obsessed with > taking legitimate requests for features that USED TO BE THERE, and > obviously were used quite heavily by some people, and dismissing them > entirely. The main feature I want that the Galeon developers refuse is a default zoom setting. They don't seem to be able to see that setting default font sizes *doesn't* achieve quite the same thing. Increasing the zoom seems to be better for making small fonts look bigger without making the default ones too big, but more importantly, HTML allows absolute font sizes to be specified, and this feature seems to be getting (ab)used a lot. HTML authors target for Windows which has bigger on-screen fonts. If I change my DPI settings for X or fontconfig or whatever, I'll have to change many other things on my desktop to compensate, when all I want to change is the web browser. > I won't get too much into the whole gnome-simplification debate, other > than to say that even if it's wonderful for new users, or those > intimidated by too many options, it's real impediment for those who use > the thing daily and want to customize it to suit their way of using the > computer, instead of vice versa. I'm sure I'm not the only one that > found that the galeon 1.2 preferences screen made perfect sense, and it > seems that there are many of us missing features in 1.3 that don't plan > to be fixed. I always thought that GNOME was more for power users, and KDE was for people who wanted something a little less intimidating in its flexibility and/or more like Windows. But this doesn't seem to be the case any more. Apart from gnome-terminal, which I still think is excellent and is the main reason I use GNOME. The GNOME 2 "less is more" philosophy can be interpreted/implemented more than one way, and I think if it encourages developers to think more about their interfaces it's a good thing. But it can be taken too far, crippling functionality and flexibility, and I think the Galeon developers did fall into this trap at first with Galeon 2, but lately seem to have been putting a bit more thought and effort into achieving a good balance. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk |
From: Sven L. <lu...@dp...> - 2003-03-27 18:25:37
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On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 05:24:04PM +0000, Tony Houghton wrote: > In <200...@re...>, Jon-o Addleman wrote: > > > I don't think anyone's complaining that the program's not perfect - it > > IS unstable, and a work in progress. The problem that I and many others > > have is that galeon (and the whole gnome team) seems obsessed with > > taking legitimate requests for features that USED TO BE THERE, and > > obviously were used quite heavily by some people, and dismissing them > > entirely. > > The main feature I want that the Galeon developers refuse is a default > zoom setting. They don't seem to be able to see that setting default > font sizes *doesn't* achieve quite the same thing. Increasing the zoom > seems to be better for making small fonts look bigger without making the > default ones too big, but more importantly, HTML allows absolute font > sizes to be specified, and this feature seems to be getting (ab)used a > lot. HTML authors target for Windows which has bigger on-screen fonts. > If I change my DPI settings for X or fontconfig or whatever, I'll have > to change many other things on my desktop to compensate, when all I want > to change is the web browser. And per site default zoom setting also. Also, it would be cool if the images could also be zoomed, but i guess the result would not necessarily be all that readable. Friendly, Sven Luther |
From: Christian R. <me...@me...> - 2003-04-01 15:37:50
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tor 2003-03-27 klockan 19.25 skrev Sven Luther: > > The main feature I want that the Galeon developers refuse is a default > > zoom setting. They don't seem to be able to see that setting default > > font sizes *doesn't* achieve quite the same thing. Increasing the zoom > > seems to be better for making small fonts look bigger without making the > > default ones too big, but more importantly, HTML allows absolute font > > sizes to be specified, and this feature seems to be getting (ab)used a > > lot. HTML authors target for Windows which has bigger on-screen fonts. > > If I change my DPI settings for X or fontconfig or whatever, I'll have > > to change many other things on my desktop to compensate, when all I want > > to change is the web browser. > > And per site default zoom setting also. > > Also, it would be cool if the images could also be zoomed, but i guess > the result would not necessarily be all that readable. Actually, from an accesibility perspective, it's an absolute necessity that images can also be zoomed together with the text. If you have bad eyesight, having larger text on pages doesn't help much if the text and other details that are embedded in images are still as unreadable as before. Sadly, Mozilla doesn't allow for zooming images yet (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821), and hence that feature isn't yet available to browsers based on Mozilla either. Christian |
From: Tony H. <to...@re...> - 2003-04-01 18:35:54
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In <104...@da...>, Christian Rose wrote: > tor 2003-03-27 klockan 19.25 skrev Sven Luther: > > > The main feature I want that the Galeon developers refuse is a default > > > zoom setting. They don't seem to be able to see that setting default > > > font sizes *doesn't* achieve quite the same thing. Increasing the zoom > > > seems to be better for making small fonts look bigger without making the > > > default ones too big, but more importantly, HTML allows absolute font > > > sizes to be specified, and this feature seems to be getting (ab)used a > > > lot. HTML authors target for Windows which has bigger on-screen fonts. > > > If I change my DPI settings for X or fontconfig or whatever, I'll have > > > to change many other things on my desktop to compensate, when all I want > > > to change is the web browser. > > > > And per site default zoom setting also. Galeon 1.2 saved site zoom settings IIRC, but it was bugged, because when it reopened them it set the zoom to 100% even if it showed a different size in the widget. I don't understand why they'd go to the trouble of saving per-site zoom, but not implementing a much simpler global default. > > Also, it would be cool if the images could also be zoomed, but i guess > > the result would not necessarily be all that readable. > > Actually, from an accesibility perspective, it's an absolute necessity > that images can also be zoomed together with the text. If you have bad > eyesight, having larger text on pages doesn't help much if the text and > other details that are embedded in images are still as unreadable as > before. > > Sadly, Mozilla doesn't allow for zooming images yet > (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821), and hence that > feature isn't yet available to browsers based on Mozilla either. Being able to zoom images would be great for accessibility (but maybe a bit ugly if not by an integer factor), but there's a reason why text zooming is more important. It's because site designers mostly write for and test on IE for Windows and choose font sizes accordingly. An image looks much the same on all platforms, but Windows has a different DPI from X. If anyone's interested I'll make a web page demonstrating that changing the default font size doesn't have the same effect as changing the zoom. Ignoring requests for features because they don't think they represent the silent majority and would clutter the interface is an acceptable policy, but in the case of default zoom the reason they cite that it's unnecessary is wrong. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk |
From: Christian R. <me...@me...> - 2003-04-01 22:55:05
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tis 2003-04-01 klockan 20.35 skrev Tony Houghton: > > > Also, it would be cool if the images could also be zoomed, but i guess > > > the result would not necessarily be all that readable. > > > > Actually, from an accesibility perspective, it's an absolute necessity > > that images can also be zoomed together with the text. If you have bad > > eyesight, having larger text on pages doesn't help much if the text and > > other details that are embedded in images are still as unreadable as > > before. > > > > Sadly, Mozilla doesn't allow for zooming images yet > > (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821), and hence that > > feature isn't yet available to browsers based on Mozilla either. > > Being able to zoom images would be great for accessibility (but maybe a > bit ugly if not by an integer factor), but there's a reason why text > zooming is more important. It's because site designers mostly write for > and test on IE for Windows and choose font sizes accordingly. An image > looks much the same on all platforms, but Windows has a different DPI > from X. > > If anyone's interested I'll make a web page demonstrating that changing > the default font size doesn't have the same effect as changing the zoom. Galeon used to have a minimum font size preference. Is that what you're looking for? Christian |
From: Tony H. <to...@re...> - 2003-04-01 23:21:19
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In <104...@da...>, you wrote: > Galeon used to have a minimum font size preference. Is that what you're > looking for? It's still there AFAIK, and it's helpful, but it isn't quite what I want. Say a webmaster has specified some text in 7pt and some in 8pt - not necessarily using points, but perhaps in HTML logical font sizes that correspond to 7pt and 8pt as I look at them - and the difference conveys some useful information. If I had my minimum size set to 8pt I'd lose that difference. Also, ISTM that increasing the default font size (from 12pt) causes a larger spread of sizes than increasing the zoom, so that if you make it big enough not to have to strain at the smaller sizes in common use, headings etc get ridiculously huge. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk |
From: Tommi K. <tom...@ik...> - 2003-03-27 14:59:33
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On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 16:15, Charles E Taylor IV wrote: > On 27 Mar 2003 13:58:22 +0200 > Tommi Komulainen <tom...@ik...> wrote: >=20 > > Urgh, that's because there's another setting (hidden in gconf) for > > behavior on startup (which is ever so slightly different from new page)= =20 > > Probably some relic from galeon1.2. Definitely will fix one way or the > > other, probably just remove the confusing extra pref. >=20 > I can't try Galeon 1.3 for the moment because of one of its dependencies, > but are you seriously saying that there's no way outside of gconf to > change whether or not Galeon tries to load a web page on startup? At the moment, probably no, I didn't check. The On New Page setting in Preferences should probably be used, but since 1.2 had two different preferences for these (for who knows what reason) there could've been a slight mixup in 1.3. > > With > > gestures you can, if you want to, get your mouse more efficient.=20 > > Instead of aiming at the little back or close buttons, you can use big > > wide gestures instead (sound familiar with your example of the bookmark > > editor?) >=20 > That's no excuse for a hard-to-hit button. Not everyone uses a > tradiitional mouse. My main computer is a Thinkpad 770Z - which comes wit= h > a trackpoint. Trying to do mouse gestures with a trackpoint is amusing at > best. Who said anything of the kind? *In comparison* to the toolbar buttons, the area you can perform the actions (go back, etc.) with gestures is enormous. --=20 Tommi Komulainen tom...@ik... GPG 1024D/68388EE6 6FD6 DD79 EB38 BF6F 3533 09C0 04A8 9871 6838 8EE6 |
From: Charles E T. IV <to...@mi...> - 2003-03-27 15:23:30
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On 27 Mar 2003 16:59:14 +0200 Tommi Komulainen <tom...@ik...> wrote: > At the moment, probably no, I didn't check. The On New Page setting in > Preferences should probably be used, but since 1.2 had two different > preferences for these (for who knows what reason) there could've been a > slight mixup in 1.3. Good. I'm all for simplifying configuration (I *like* Gnome2 :) ), bur some sort of control of what's done when Galeon starts up is essential - and it's something even an average user is going to look for. Aftar all, not everyone has a live Internet connection when starting a browser (nor do we necessarily need one for any particular session - I often browse / edit local pages, and I'd hate to actually change my "home" page just so Galeon didn't have to time/error out every time it started up. When Red Hat 9 comes out, I should be able to check on such things for myself. > Who said anything of the kind? *In comparison* to the toolbar buttons, > the area you can perform the actions (go back, etc.) with gestures is > enormous. I agree with that statement, but it just sounded like you were implying "Who needs to hit the button? You've got gestures!" Sorry I misread you there. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- * Charles Taylor <to...@mi...> * Chemistry teacher, Linux enthusiast! -------------------------------------------------------------------- * College Chemistry website: http://home.mindspring.com/~charletiv/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
From: Jon B. <jw...@fa...> - 2003-04-01 16:20:59
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On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 10:29, Christian Rose wrote: > So what you're seeing here with developers not blindly following every > user's comments, or even the majority of comments from specific users on > this list, is actually a lot of common sense applied in filtering which > comments are relevant and which ones are not. Even though developers > might not always be usability experts, they always know their software, > and they know their project's goals and the users they have in mind. However, if the goal is to make a very usable browser, shouldn't the targeted audience be studied to some degree not based on any filtering by the devloper, but based on the target audience's feedback and unbiased analysis of that data? The fact that developers are not usability experts makes it hard for them to filter the input reliably. (And I don't mean reliable in the sense of integrity.) Maybe I'm not understanding the audience Galeon targets? I use it daily and prefer it..... however, with 1.3 I'm really puzzled why some simple (trival?) things have dissappeared (or so it seems). For example- "Block images from this server". I loved that feature. I killed whole legions of banner ads with it. However, it seems to not be available in 1.3.3. I understand the arguments being made on both sides and everyone has good points. However, it gets back to a question of usability by the..... user. Not "does the developer think that should be there" or "does the developer think it and x out of y mails support him". I think we can see how usability is affected if that one feature isn't there- so how is it effected if it is there? Other simple points I've noticed in my use of Galeon 1.3.3: - Showing a tab when only one tab is open - Adding bookmarks available in each bookmark folder as an option - Icon fetching - The aforementioned "block images" These are simple things that many users may not ever care about. And they are not show stoppers in that I must have them to work. They are simply preferences. Are the decisions made with reference to these based on improving the software and it's usability or simply the preferences of the developers? Should they be based on some sort of usability study? How does the absense of those options improve usability? I've been following these discussions with interest- I'm typically a lurker who fears to tread lists- but it really appears that the discussions are getting higher into the philosophy area and the questions of usability as it relates to Galeon are getting left behind. Back to lurking....... : - ) Jon Bius |
From: Christian R. <me...@me...> - 2003-04-01 17:37:09
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tis 2003-04-01 klockan 18.19 skrev Jon Bius: > > So what you're seeing here with developers not blindly following every > > user's comments, or even the majority of comments from specific users on > > this list, is actually a lot of common sense applied in filtering which > > comments are relevant and which ones are not. Even though developers > > might not always be usability experts, they always know their software, > > and they know their project's goals and the users they have in mind. > > However, if the goal is to make a very usable browser, shouldn't the > targeted audience be studied to some degree not based on any filtering > by the devloper, but based on the target audience's feedback and > unbiased analysis of that data? The fact that developers are not > usability experts makes it hard for them to filter the input reliably. > (And I don't mean reliable in the sense of integrity.) That's certainly true and user tests is what one would very often use in an ideal world. It's rather difficult though to construct, perform and analyze such tests in practice though. It takes much time and resources to construct a meaningful test, find unbiased test subjects and a representative sample of them, and take note of and analyze the data. Sun has made some user tests of GNOME sessions in general (pre-GNOME 2.2) but it's simply not possible resource-wise to do such tests for every little design decision in every application. Especially not in the world of free software where resources already are sparse. That's why several UI design recommendations in GNOME are based on recommendations from other environments, where we can suspect (and sometimes know) that the decisions are based on user testing. When we don't have recommendations, we have to base the decisions on what can be expected with familiarity from other applications and environments, cognitive aspects etc. > Maybe I'm not understanding the audience Galeon targets? I use it daily > and prefer it..... however, with 1.3 I'm really puzzled why some simple > (trival?) things have dissappeared (or so it seems). For example- "Block > images from this server". I loved that feature. I killed whole legions > of banner ads with it. However, it seems to not be available in 1.3.3. You're not alone. An important clue to the answer to that puzzle is the past development history of Galeon. Galeon 1.2 ended up to be a mess of configurability of which most of the developers were unhappy. That's why the initial Galeon 2 port removed many features in order to make a very simplistic browser. Not all developers were happy with that and considered the move too radical, and after disagreement there was a fork which created the Epiphany browser project, which still has that goal of simplicity. Galeon 2 on the other hand now is in the process of getting some of the missing features from Galeon 1.x back, as soon as developers have had time to port the code. Not all features will be coming back though, according to developer comments. > I understand the arguments being made on both sides and everyone has > good points. However, it gets back to a question of usability by > the..... user. Not "does the developer think that should be there" or > "does the developer think it and x out of y mails support him". I think > we can see how usability is affected if that one feature isn't there- so > how is it effected if it is there? Usability is affected by present features if they require visible configurability. It often becomes much harder to find the preference you're specifically looking for if there's many preferences that may be totally irrelevant. Also, there are tradeoffs to program complexity, testing and maintainership. Havoc Pennington has written articles about those topics that are much worth reading. You can find them at http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html and http://www106.pair.com/rhp/features.html. > Other simple points I've noticed in my use of Galeon 1.3.3: > > - Showing a tab when only one tab is open > - Adding bookmarks available in each bookmark folder as an option > - Icon fetching > - The aforementioned "block images" > > These are simple things that many users may not ever care about. And > they are not show stoppers in that I must have them to work. They are > simply preferences. Are the decisions made with reference to these based > on improving the software and it's usability or simply the preferences > of the developers? Should they be based on some sort of usability study? > How does the absense of those options improve usability? Any preference has a cost, usability-wise (parsing, understanding) and development-wise (testing, maintainership). It's always a question on whether a specific preference is worth it in the big picture. I can't comment on the specific preferences you mention above, as I'm not a Galeon coder. It may just be that they aren't ported yet. I don't know. Christian |
From: Michael L T. <to...@ch...> - 2003-04-01 18:46:08
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On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 11:17, Christian Rose wrote: > If you're not using Galeon anymore, why are you still wasting your (and > other people's) time with bad, untruthful remarks=B9 on this list? >=20 I think it's because these are the reasons he left Galeon, and many users share them. It appears the developers aren't really listening, so these things are bound to happen. Most galeon users that I know of have already left galeon for phoenix. I still use galeon, but I really miss the features I used to have. If they don't return, I will also leave galeon eventually. The only thing that keeps me from that is that I don't really like phoenix right now, nor mozilla, mainly because of the way the tab interface is more awkward (close button not on tab, etc). Michael >=20 > Christian >=20 >=20 > =B9 The term "FUD" is close, but I don't like using that. >=20 >=20 >=20 > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: ValueWeb:=20 > Dedicated Hosting for just $79/mo with 500 GB of bandwidth!=20 > No other company gives more support or power for your dedicated server > http://click.atdmt.com/AFF/go/sdnxxaff00300020aff/direct/01/ > _______________________________________________ > Galeon-user mailing list > Gal...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/galeon-user --=20 Michael L Torrie <to...@ch...> |
From: Stephen R. N. <sr...@fn...> - 2003-04-01 19:54:10
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On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 04:45, Michael L Torrie wrote: > On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 11:17, Christian Rose wrote: >=20 > > If you're not using Galeon anymore, why are you still wasting your (and > > other people's) time with bad, untruthful remarks=B9 on this list? > >=20 >=20 > I think it's because these are the reasons he left Galeon, and many > users share them. It appears the developers aren't really listening, so > these things are bound to happen. Most galeon users that I know of have > already left galeon for phoenix. I still use galeon, but I really miss > the features I used to have. If they don't return, I will also leave > galeon eventually. The only thing that keeps me from that is that I > don't really like phoenix right now, nor mozilla, mainly because of the > way the tab interface is more awkward (close button not on tab, etc). >=20 > Michael Agreed. I'm going to go to Phoenix as soon as it gets a bit more stable. Fortunately, it lokos like Phoenix is going to become the Gnome platform browser. Sadly, this might mean that Galeon will just wither up and blow away in the long term, especially as it's aimed at a large, invisible and undetectable audience. Stephen --=20 Stephen Robert Norris <sr...@fn...> Farrow Norris Pty Ltd |
From: Christian R. <me...@me...> - 2003-04-01 21:56:32
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tis 2003-04-01 klockan 21.53 skrev Stephen Robert Norris: > Fortunately, it lokos like Phoenix is going to become the Gnome platform > browser. I've heard of no such plans. I don't think most other GNOME developers/contributors have either. Would you like to enlighten us with your wisdom regarding this? Christian |
From: Stephen R. N. <sr...@fn...> - 2003-04-01 20:51:49
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On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 06:43, Christophe Fergeau wrote: > > She uses some of the features that have gone away. I "upgraded" her to > > 1.3 and she insisted on going back to 1.2, because she wanted the > > missing features. >=20 > Out of interest, what are these features ? Session saving, middle clicking to open in the window, middle-clicking on the new button to open in a new window (she hated that one had gone and the other swapped position). > >=20 > > Most non-technical users won't be that lucky; they'll simply get stuck > > with whatever their distro ships. >=20 > Yeah, and I don't think they'll suffer from that >=20 > I'm getting bored of all those "I'm using galeon so I'm a user so you > must listen to me when I request a feature" threads :-( Most of the > time, those who complain aren't representative of the majority Who, so far as I can see, don't actually exist. There's no evidence they do; they are just a convenient group to blame for whatever whim takes developers fancy at any time. > Christophe --=20 Stephen Robert Norris <sr...@fn...> Farrow Norris Pty Ltd |
From: Christian R. <me...@me...> - 2003-04-01 21:33:01
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tis 2003-04-01 klockan 22.51 skrev Stephen Robert Norris: > > I'm getting bored of all those "I'm using galeon so I'm a user so you > > must listen to me when I request a feature" threads :-( Most of the > > time, those who complain aren't representative of the majority > > Who, so far as I can see, don't actually exist. There's no evidence they > do; they are just a convenient group to blame for whatever whim takes > developers fancy at any time. So you're still suggesting that most Galeon users are subscribed to this list? I seriously have a hard time to imagine any majority of school users, government users or corporate users that happen to have a GNOME desktop on their desk take such an active interest in their computer, even less with any specific application that happens to be on it. The days GNOME was a hobbyist desktop only used by a few are long gone. Christian |
From: Christophe F. <te...@us...> - 2003-04-01 21:12:29
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> Who, so far as I can see, don't actually exist. There's no evidence they > do; they are just a convenient group to blame for whatever whim takes > developers fancy at any time. >=20 I know at least one of them, and my family would probably perfectly fit in that group if I converted them to linux (ie the further their complaint would go would be to me) :) Christophe |
From: Erik <er...@kn...> - 2003-04-01 21:24:41
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Christophe Fergeau <te...@us...> wrote: > > Most non-technical users won't be that lucky; they'll simply get stuck > > with whatever their distro ships. > > Yeah, and I don't think they'll suffer from that They'll just join this list and request the features be re-added. > I'm getting bored of all those "I'm using galeon so I'm a user so you > must listen to me when I request a feature" threads :-( Most of the > time, those who complain aren't representative of the majority Galeon users don't represent galeon users? That's interesting. Where are these mythical users, demanding the removal of features? Are there any threads on any list where people have requested, in any mount, the removal of features? I doubt it. If one or two have, they don't represent the majority any more than those of us making a point to have the features. This is all a really bad misperception of a few developers, backed by a few articles by unqualified usability "experts" assuming unix users somehow can't handle configuring their browser. It really shouldn't be necessary anyway. It really boils down to implimentation. If the configuration UI is difficult, that's not the users fault. Users, especially power users, shouldn't be undermined by some attempt to make things easier for a select few. There is already a browser forked for those users, Epiphany. It is not necessary for galeon to fill this void. I think what attracted most users to galeon (apart from standard compliance and speed) was how powerful a browser it is. The features it has (had). If galeon continues to strip down, a new fork (of 1.2) will be necessary, because there will be a void in the power browser area. -- Erik |
From: Tommi K. <tom...@ik...> - 2003-03-27 11:58:47
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On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 04:11, jk...@cs... wrote: > Galeon now always loads the homepage on startup, regardless of the settin= gs > of "on new window". Severity: Annoying -- Won't fix. Urgh, that's because there's another setting (hidden in gconf) for behavior on startup (which is ever so slightly different from new page)=20 Probably some relic from galeon1.2. Definitely will fix one way or the other, probably just remove the confusing extra pref. > Pasting a URL into the window (ie copy a url to the X clipboard and then = middle > click in the galeon window) used to load the URL in that window. Now it > spawns a new window with the URL in it. This isn't the old behavior and > probably isn't what the user intended (its's defintaly not what I intende= d=20 > any of the times I've done in the past 3 years.) Severity: Annoying This is only because you've become accustomed to that behavior. I'm claiming that if you hadn't, you'd find the current behavior more consistent; every other application (not counting mozilla because that's the odd one out) I can remember that uses middle-click pasting appends the text (current behavior) instead of replacing it (old behavior.) > Smartbookmarks always have those freakin' huge dropdown buttons. This is > also known as "smartbookmarks save history". I never liked it because I = never > use it. I use my google smartbookmark way too much. I'd like to disable= it. > Severity: Annoying -- Probably won't fix. Default configuration does not show any dropdown buttons, so you must've enabled them manually. Could be also legacy from your old galeon1.2 configuration. Adding UI for that pref could be wontfix, can't really tell as I'm not particularly familiar with all the options related to bookmarks. > Gestures are stuck on, so context menus in the page are are sluggish to a= ppear > and sometimes take multiple tries. Gestures are disabled in the default configuration exactly for the reasons mentioned. If you had them enabled in 1.2 you also have them in 1.3, otherwise you need to willingly turn them on in gconf. > I've never been a big fan of gestures, they > always struck me a bit of fad. Sure they can be useful for certain apps = (ie > mentor graphics), but in a mouse-and-keyboard centeric app (like a browse= r) they > just seem like trendy flash. I beg to differ, when you have decent bookmarks, you don't really need the keyboard at all, you can do pretty much everything with mouse. With gestures you can, if you want to, get your mouse more efficient.=20 Instead of aiming at the little back or close buttons, you can use big wide gestures instead (sound familiar with your example of the bookmark editor?) > Font selection dialog is missing many fonts. Those that do appear are us= ually > the wrong version of that font. This is a general GNOME mistake. For in= stance, > I have probably 3 "helvetica"s (including both adobe-helvetica and ms-hel= vetica > (both vector-based)), but NONE appear on the list. Umm... Severity: Sev= ere -- > There needs to be a new font widget. The old one was byzantine unless yo= u > wanted a very specific font, the new single selection dropdown is often m= isses > fonts and those that it does find are often the wrong ones. -- Probably = not > galeon, but galeon should work around it. Those fonts that appear in the font selection are the ones mozilla can handle, trying to feed mozilla fonts it can't use would be just stupid.=20 That said, GNOME (and mozilla at least with some configuration settings) use fontconfig to find fonts, maybe your configuration isn't including the fonts you mentioned. > There's no way to set plugins. It used to be Preferences|plugins, but th= at's > gone. Severity: Severe -- gconftool isn't a solution. You mean the Java plugin setting in Preferences|Filtering? I can't remember anymore, did 1.2 really have more control over plugins? > Now for a general comment to head off the the whole "well you could use g= conf > and add the key 'xyzzy'..." crowd. Telling the user to edit the registry= to > set a value that was previously controlled by a dialog is not a solution.= =20 > Sending a luser in with a tool that could easily silently break stuff sev= erely > is not a good. The registry is sensitive to values, and there's no room = for > error. Keys are undocumented in the user docs and often aren't even docu= mented > in the the devel docs. Often someone will simply say "set xyzzy", but th= e > values won't necessarily be obvious. Does this take a number or a string= ?=20 > What's the are the valid values for the string (ie "Is it 'center' or > 'centre'?")? Contantly shoving people off to the registry eventually lea= ds to > an almost emacs like experience. It's never configured quite right, and = you > know you can fix it, but you have no idea how. Even if you did, it would= n't be > nearly as easy as it should be. Also, if people keep questioning about i= f you > can change something, and the answer that keeps coming back is "gconf", t= hen > maybe you do need a dialgo for this. gconftool/gconf-editor is just the means for those who know what they want. You want gestures enabled? Change that gconf key to that value.=20 You want to see if you can break anything? Feel free to mess around with gconf. Common sense should not be extinct yet... And just so that you know, every gconf key is supposed to have documentation attached to it, you can see it in gconf-editor. (This seems to be pretty common misconception about gconf.) Galeon 1.3 is still labeled as being in development, because of these things. In practice it's stable for browsing, but it's not ready to be released because documentation is lacking and some features are missing from the UI, and things like that. Help would be much appreciated. > Look at mozilla's preference dialog. Lots of options, but not overwhelmi= ng.=20 > Galeon's used to be like that, but it's just a butchered to the point to = being > marginally useful. Well, I (and many others) find mozilla preferences overwhelming, and I actually find the 1.2 prefs pretty awkward too, since it's unlike any other prefs dialog out there. But it's all subjective, really... --=20 Tommi Komulainen tom...@ik... GPG 1024D/68388EE6 6FD6 DD79 EB38 BF6F 3533 09C0 04A8 9871 6838 8EE6 |
From: Stephen R. N. <sr...@fn...> - 2003-03-27 23:00:36
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On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 22:58, Tommi Komulainen wrote: > On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 04:11, jk...@cs... wrote: > > Galeon now always loads the homepage on startup, regardless of the settings > > of "on new window". Severity: Annoying -- Won't fix. > > Urgh, that's because there's another setting (hidden in gconf) for > behavior on startup (which is ever so slightly different from new page) > Probably some relic from galeon1.2. Definitely will fix one way or the > other, probably just remove the confusing extra pref. > > > > Pasting a URL into the window (ie copy a url to the X clipboard and then middle > > click in the galeon window) used to load the URL in that window. Now it > > spawns a new window with the URL in it. This isn't the old behavior and > > probably isn't what the user intended (its's defintaly not what I intended > > any of the times I've done in the past 3 years.) Severity: Annoying > > This is only because you've become accustomed to that behavior. I'm > claiming that if you hadn't, you'd find the current behavior more > consistent; every other application (not counting mozilla because that's > the odd one out) I can remember that uses middle-click pasting appends > the text (current behavior) instead of replacing it (old behavior.) This is just not true, and you know it. For example, gnumeric doesn't do anything sensible on a middle-click; it certainly doesn't append the clipboard. Every browser I've used since very early Netscape releases (about 2, IIRC) has used the current window on a middle click. This is just another example of the current gnome "make it simple _for me_" philosophy. The developers decide the "right way" for something and ignore any complaints - generally suggesting that the users are just doing it wrong, or need to relearn how they work (see above). Stephen |