bugSynaptic - Bugs: bug #3270, UI/usability suggestions

 
 

bug #3270: UI/usability suggestions

Submitter:  Invalid User ID <#3528>
Submitted:  Fri 18 Apr 2003 11:29:17 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  None Severity:  2,5
Item Group:  None Status:  None
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  mvogt
Open/Closed:  Open
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Wed 04 Jun 2003 10:20:31 AM UTC, comment #16: 



Hi,

I finally found the time to have a look at the problems you describe and tackle some of them.


>- Status bar tells me to look at the console I launched >Synaptic from for more info. Given that I'm using a GUI app >vs. apt-get itself, and I'm launching it from a GUI >(GNOME), this message is silly. If people wanted the >console for messages, they wouldn't use a GUI application. >;-)


this is fixed in my tree and will be part of the next release. It's actually a accient message as synaptic can display the action of the package manager in it's own window for quite some time now.

>- The preferences dialog has [OK] [Apply] [Close]. That is >completely meaningless to me. [Apply] is clear in that the >settings take effect, but not if it also closes the dialog. >What does OK mean? Does Close save the changes or not? I'd >suggest going with the HIG and making all changes be >instant apply, and simply have [Revert] [Close] or [Revert] >[Accept]. A help button that explains the behaviour of the >option would be nice too, altho I definitely know how hard >it can be to pull together good docs. ;-)


I changed this for now to [OK] = save&close, [Apply]=save, [Cancel]=close. I only had a quick look over the HIG so far, so this may change to [ok],[cancel]

>- The little arrows to represent Status aren't very clear. >Better/different icons should be used that more clearly >represents the differing states.


I quite like them. The problem is IMHO that those small altert icons that some others are using look confusing. But I'm open to suggestions. What alternative icons would you suggest?

>Also, on a more frivolous note... the RH8/9 up2date >installer has this nifty interface for installing package >groups and individual components. I don't know what they >use to build this (a separate database or tags/info in the >packages), but it's cool. 


I never used up2date, so you have to help me here :) Is this some kind of task support? So I can click on "I want to develop with C/C++" or "I want to run a webserver" ? If you, the foundation is there with (the upcoming) 0.37. We have save/load selection support now. It should be easy to extend this to something like what you suggest.

>- The Enabled field should be a check box.
> - Doing the above, remove the "Disable" checkbox

Done for 0.37

>- The shared edit/add bit is really confusing. It probably doesn't help that every app that works that way works slightly differently... It'd probably be better to break this up. Perhaps have a "New Repository" button to open a dialog to add one? You don't want a billion dialog boxes, but the current way is just plain exasperating.


This works a bit different now and we hope it's more intuitive now.

>- Also, the 'Edit' button next to the repositories should be 'Edit Repositories' or similar - so you know what it's editing (versus just having to click on it to find out).


This bit is called "Vendors" now. We hope this make it clearer.


I haven't commented all of the suggestions now, I'll come back to them later. It's a rather long bugreport :)

I also split this bugreport of into two.

thanks,
 Michael

Michael Vogt <mvogt>
Group administrator
Sat 10 May 2003 10:56:56 AM UTC, comment #15: 

Thanks for your thoughts about the repository dialog. I'm in the middle of rewriting it. It's written without glade and that need to be changed. Can't say when it's finished though :)

Michael Vogt <mvogt>
Group administrator
Fri 09 May 2003 03:17:17 PM UTC, comment #14: 

"The GNOME UI mantra lately has been to remove all features that newbies can't understand, or at least hide them so that you have to use gconf-editor"

That's right. For instance, it's no longer possible to add on the fly shortcuts when looking menus.
Beginners now just discover an interface with nothing more than MS Windows one.
Because it's not in fact "features that newbies can't understand" but features that newbies aren't familiar with, because theses features lack on MS Windows.

I used GNOME since the 1.0.0 release. I stopped around the 1.2.0, using wmaker instead. I also use KDE 3 since it's release on one of my computers.  As someone else here, I absolutely do not understand how new GNOME applications are now designed. But this is not the right place to discuss about GNOME.

For Synaptic, as user, I hope that the evolution will go toward KDE UI instead of GNOME 2 UI.




Mathieu Roy <yeupou>
Fri 09 May 2003 02:01:48 PM UTC, comment #13: 

I can't think of any featuers to remove from Synaptic, since doing so would defeat the purpose of the application, which isn't something GNOME2 advocates (a hard-to-use but functional app is better than a simplistic one that doesn't do what it's supposed to - which is why I Synaptic over, say, gnome-apt shudder).

The "fact" of GNOME being unusable isn't much of a fact given that I make heavy use of it all day at work, and then for a good deal of time at home, but hey, opinions vary.  I find XMMS all but unusable, yet it seems to be vastly popular.

Back to Synaptic, one more usability suggestion - if a package can't be installed/upgraded, it never says why (that I can tell).  It just refuses to mark the application as ready to be installed/upgraded.  If the reason can't be extracted (don't know how you're getting the output from apt, thru a lib or parsing output), at least a dialog like "This package cannot be [installed|upgraded].  This may be due to uninstallable dependencies or a broken package.  [OK]"

Also, for held packages, I don't think it indicated the package was held, except for the checkbox if you select the package - changing the colour or the mini-indicator-icon for held packages would make it more clear up front for forgetful people like myself.  ;-)

Also also, this might be a separate bug, but how well is accessibility taken care of?  I don't have a11y needs myself, but it would nice if Synaptic works cleanly with screen readers and whatnot for disabled people.  Asking on -email is unavailable- the Sun folks or others might play with it a bit (since they care about that, since technically the app must be accessible for certain gov't organizations, and the disabled rather appreciate it).

Anonymous
Fri 09 May 2003 10:54:54 AM UTC, comment #12: 


> The HIG is available online. It explains the reasoning behind all of its suggestions. The studies used online. The same goes for Apple's HIG, and so on. There are numerous books covering the issues.


The reasons are irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that GNOME is unusable. Whatever rationale they might have for it does not make it any more usable.

> You might also want to read the suggestion I put in, since you seem to be defending features, which I never asked to be removed. I merely asked for the features present to be laid out in something more logical and intuitive.


The GNOME UI mantra lately has been to remove all features that newbies can't understand, or at least hide them so that you have to use gconf-editor. If this isn't what you had in mind, then I am (at least somewhat) relieved.

P.S. Sorry for pulling out the TOZT-7.

Invalid User ID <#18709>
Thu 08 May 2003 02:44:39 PM UTC, comment #11: 

Right.  My apologies for flaming I was involved in.  ^^;

A few suggestions for the Repository config dialog (I noticed last night):

- The Enabled field should be a check box.
- Doing the above, remove the "Disable" checkbox
- The type should be more human-readable text (Binary and Source, or something) - also, when I'm use apt-rpm, the option for deb and deb-src are rather silly.  ;-)
- The shared edit/add bit is really confusing.  It probably doesn't help that every app that works that way works slightly differently... It'd probably be better to break this up.  Perhaps have a "New Repository" button to open a dialog to add one?  You don't want a billion dialog boxes, but the current way is just plain exasperating.
- Should the vendor drop-down perhaps show the full name instead of the short code?  'fr' or 'nr' isn't obvious off-hand, the full name is (a little) better.
- Also, the 'Edit' button next to the repositories should be 'Edit Repositories' or similar - so you know what it's editing (versus just having to click on it to find out).

Which reminds me of a different bug I need to place.


Anonymous
Thu 08 May 2003 02:21:34 PM UTC, comment #10: 

I get the impression this discussion into the wrong direction. I want synaptic to be HIG compliant, but this can not be done in a matter of days. So, please note that I take your suggestions very serious, but I don't like the strong language that is used here. It does not help anyone. I was offline for a few days because I'm reloacting so I was not able to write my comments earlier. Again, I take this matter serious, but if  I don't get any patches for this matter, it will take time.

bye,
 Michael

Michael Vogt <mvogt>
Group administrator
Wed 07 May 2003 01:35:08 PM UTC, comment #9: 

I'm not going to sink to personal attacks on this.  You're beliefs are your own, no matter how much I see it as being, thru plain common sense, utterly silly.

The HIG is available online.  It explains the reasoning behind all of its suggestions.  The studies used online.  The same goes for Apple's HIG, and so on.  There are numerous books covering the issues.

You might also want to read the suggestion I put in, since you seem to be defending features, which I never asked to be removed.  I merely asked for the features present to be laid out in something more logical and intuitive.  THe changes presented will also add consistancy, since every other GTK2 app I've come across at least follows the basics of the GNOME; those that ahven't, I logged bugs on, and the authors gladly have updated them.  Synaptic sticks out like a sore thumb when it looks/acts like no other app on my entirely GTK2-based system.

So far as whether usability is a toy or not, that's rather humourous - if the apps are only usably by Linux geeks playing around on their home machines, and not by people in the mass-market consumer or corporate fields, that sounds far more like a toy, doesn't it?  ;-)

My suggestions do not remove features, do not make the app any harder to use, they do increase consistancy across GTK2 apps, do increase usability, and so on.

Oh, one more note - OK is apparantly the right term to use, if there isn't a Cancel button - I had misread the HIG.    Sorry for any confusion I might have added there.  ^^;

-email is unavailable- should definitely be consulted as the professional usability engineers are there.  The HIG should also be consulted over my suggestions, since I can obviously make mistakes.  :)

Anonymous
Wed 07 May 2003 03:25:31 AM UTC, comment #8: 


> You are an idiot if we use the right labels and buttons?


Depends on what you mean by 'right'.

> You are stupid if the button says Accept instead of OK?


If you really want it to say 'Accept' instead of 'OK', be my guest. But not even high, holy Mac OS Classic UI (that the so-called 'usability experts' seem to be attempting to reimplement, poorly) does that.

> Cancel/Accept are excellent labels to use


And OK/Cancel are not?

> are used in a lot more than just GNOME


Such as?

> and the "so called usability experts" came to this conclusion by actual studies and testing.


If they did any actual studies and testing, they would not have designed such an unusable user interface. I don't believe this for a second.

> have many many many years of computer experience


Now you sound like Andrew Tanenbaum talking to Linus Torvalds. Don't you want to be, you know, credible?

> It's app developers that think like you that guarantee Microsoft will continue to be the dominant desktop vendor for the forseeable future.


Because?

> So far as your assumptions about what newbies understand and don't, you are so far off.


GNOME newbies, not compuphobes. Compuphobes do not use GNOME.

> The HIG was developed after actually testing these buttons/labels/guides on real people


Did anyone bother to get their IQ?

> I, confident in my intellect


...refuse to use reason or common sense, because you're just such a brilliant effing intellectual. Get real. And while you're at it, try testing your user interfaces on humans instead of rodents.

> would love a more usable synaptic.


Your idea of usability horrifies me. Synaptic is already quite usable, if perhaps missing a feature here and there.

> Less experienced users would also love it.


Less experienced users do not use Synaptic. That's another problem with the GNOME HIG; its intended audience is way off kilter.

> Stuck-up arrogant fools would disagree.


Personal attacks now. How predictable.

> If you are so interested in having a complicated app with no usability to speak of, I suggest using a terminal and apt-get.


Apparently you see nothing in the graphical user interface other than as a toy with which to appeal to retards. Attitudes like that have produced such utter disasters as GNOME 2.

I seek a GUI application like Synaptic simply because terminal interfaces to APT are not powerful and flexible enough. Multiple selection, for instance, is a chore in these interfaces. Access to obscure functionality is, too, as there are no menus in which to find it. (Any terminal application with menus and a pointer is, IMO, a terminal-based approximation of a GUI, rather than a regular terminal application.)

You may be confident in your 'intellect', but I am horrified by it and the damage it conspires to inflict on fine and usable applications such as Synaptic.

Invalid User ID <#18709>
Sun 04 May 2003 04:36:08 PM UTC, comment #7: 

What is this last comment?  You are an idiot if we use the right labels and buttons?  You are stupid if the button says Accept instead of OK?

that is the best way to make yourself look like a frickin idiot.  Cancel/Accept are excellent labels to use, are used in a lot more than just GNOME, and the "so called usability experts" came to this conclusion by actual studies and testing.  I'm personally quite confident in my intellect, have many many many years of computer experience, and I'm not offended by it.

It's app developers that think like you that guarantee Microsoft will continue to be the dominant desktop vendor for the forseeable future.

So far as your assumptions about what newbies understand and don't, you are so far off.  The HIG was developed after actually testing these buttons/labels/guides on real people, not making half-assed assumptions based on a smidgeon of personal experience.  You want to know how bad even Apply/OK is?  Work in help desk for 3+ years.  You won't believe how many of those "users are so dumb" jokes you read online are based on truth.

I, confident in my intellect, would love a more usable synaptic.  Less experienced users would also love it.  Stuck-up arrogant fools would disagree.  If you are so interested in having a complicated app with no usability to speak of, I suggest using a terminal and apt-get.

</rant>

Anonymous
Sun 04 May 2003 06:42:59 AM UTC, comment #6: 

That last comment was mine. Sorry I forgot to login.

Invalid User ID <#18709>
Sun 04 May 2003 06:36:03 AM UTC, comment #5: 

- The preferences dialog has [OK] [Apply] [Close]. That is completely meaningless to me. [Apply] is clear in that the settings take effect, but not if it also closes the dialog. What does OK mean? Does Close save the changes or not? I'd suggest going with the HIG and making all changes be instant apply, and simply have [Revert] [Close] or [Revert] [Accept]. A help button that explains the behaviour of the option would be nice too, altho I definitely know how hard it can be to pull together good docs. ;-)

No, no, NO! Please do not treat Synaptic users like idiots. Not even Windows newbies fail to understand the distinction between Apply and OK, and the behavior of each.

The drive for 'ease of use' has rendered GNOME 2 unusable. I was so thoroughly disgusted with it that I switched to KDE, after having been a staunch GNOME advocate for years. I did not appreciate being utterly disregarded by the self-proclaimed 'usability experts' dictating how GNOME's UI would be. As it has been said, design a system a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.

Please do not allow the seriously misguided GNOME user interface guidelines to destroy Synaptic as they have destroyed so many other fine applications.

Anonymous
Fri 02 May 2003 11:40:40 AM UTC, comment #4: 

I think this bug has to be splitted into several bugs:

1. About search:
Most users expect to get a video player program when they type text "video player" in field "Find Package" in main synaptic window. I think there should be an option (turned off by default) "Exact package searching" (which controls behaviour to search by description or by exact name in "Find Package" field in main synaptic window) in synaptic preferences. Btw, why search by description in synaptic 0.36 and apt-cache search produces different results ?
Search meniu item should be added to Action meniu, not to main menu. Also only one search action with ability search in package name and package description (like "Filter Packages" dialog in stormpkg program) should be added.

2. Installing recommended and/or suggested packages
With stormpkg installing recommended or suggested packages is very easy. Now synaptic contains option "Automaticaly select recommended packages on actions", which is very helpful, but this can also be improved - just do like stormpkg:
when user presses install button and "changes" dialog with packages (to be marked for installation) is displayed, synaptic could also show suggested packages in this dialog with the ability to install wanted ones - I think two more columns could be added - one with checkbox and second one with dependency type (depend, recommend or suggest).

3. Filtering and sorting
There are no way to filter packages by size or to find a package, that wastes more space on disk in synaptic. I think in main package view should be columns "Package Size" and "Installed Size" (or at least one column "Size" which means installed size) and posibility to sort packages by clicking on headers of these columns should be added.

About half a year ago deity - very good apt frontend was removed from debian :(((. This fronted had the ability to sort and filter packages list by size, section, installed or available version, and other parameters.
Try to use deity and you will see how comfortable and powerfull it is.
You can download deity from
http://files.akl.lt/veidrodis/misc_deb_packages/stable/ (gtk frontend is still buggy, but curses frontend is pretty stable). You can grab best ideas from deity and stormpkg :)

Anonymous
Sat 19 Apr 2003 02:14:04 PM UTC, comment #3: 

« - Status bar tells me to look at the console I launched Synaptic from for more info. Given that I'm using a GUI app vs. apt-get itself, and I'm launching it from a GUI (GNOME), this message is silly. If people wanted the console for messages, they wouldn't use a GUI application.   »

Personally, I enjoy apps that mix advantages of GUI and terminals. I would be cool if Synaptic has something like the "message buffer" of Emacs. It would be wonderfull if any synaptics commands was available like with Emacs "M-x command".

Aside from that, now GNOME people work a lot on usability but I frankly do not understand how they picked their order for buttons, on dialogs.
[cancel] [apply] [ok] or [cancel] [execute] etc...




Mathieu Roy <yeupou>
Sat 19 Apr 2003 12:18:23 PM UTC, comment #2: 

thanks for your suggestions. I justed browsed over them and they look definitly helpfull. I'll answer to them in more detail in the next few days (I'm a bit busy right now). For all the smaller ui improvments, your welcome to submit patches :) It should be pretty easy as we are (mostly) using glade2 for the dialogs.

Michael Vogt <mvogt>
Group administrator
Fri 18 Apr 2003 11:34:21 PM UTC, comment #1: 

erk, one more suggestion I just noticed - the Package Description box at the bottom, a margin is needed - the text/glyphs rub right against the edge of the text box's edge, which can be rather hard to read in some themes with mild/poor eyes (like mine).  Just several pixels worth of margin in that box would make worlds of difference.

Invalid User ID <#3528>
Fri 18 Apr 2003 11:29:17 PM UTC, original submission:  

A few UI improvements could be used.  I strongly suggest looking at the GNOME HIG (it is just as applicable to GTK2 only apps), and the folks at -email is unavailable- are immensely helpful for pulling together a good UI.

Some of the problems I found that confused me:
  - Quitting, the dialog asks if you want to quit and has button [No] [Yes].  The dialog shouldn't have any actions in its body, and the buttons should be [Cancel] [Quit].  You are forced to read the entire dialog to understand what the buttons do (while my suggestion makes it immediately clear), as No/Yes are wholly ambiguous on their own in this context.
  - Status bar tells me to look at the console I launched Synaptic from for more info.  Given that I'm using a GUI app vs. apt-get itself, and I'm launching it from a GUI (GNOME), this message is silly.  If people wanted the console for messages, they wouldn't use a GUI application.  ;-)
  - The preferences dialog has [OK] [Apply] [Close].  That is completely meaningless to me.  [Apply] is clear in that the settings take effect, but not if it also closes the dialog.  What does OK mean?  Does Close save the changes or not?  I'd suggest going with the HIG and making all changes be instant apply, and simply have [Revert] [Close] or [Revert] [Accept].  A help button that explains the behaviour of the option would be nice too, altho I definitely know how hard it can be to pull together good docs.  ;-)
  - Packge menu seems wasteful, and is confusing.  You already have buttons for its actions.  Additionally, the menu stays active, along with its items, even when no packages are selected, or a category (and not jsut a package) is selected.  If not removed entirely, it should at least become inactive/greyed-out when a package isn't selected.
  - The search menu also seems wasteful.  You already have a search bar that's always on the front interface.  If a search menu is needed, perhaps it should be moved down into another menu where it won't contribute to UI clutter and noise.
  - A lot of dialogs seem to have extraneous frames/inset-borders in them.  I don't know why these are there, but they contribute to visual noise/clutter, and look silly to boot.
  - The Filters menu and the big Filters button seem to be redundant - you don't need both.
  - The bottom frames for package info seem silly/extraneous when you have no package selected.  Perhaps they shoul dbe inactive, or a generic (clean/nice) logo/help/something should be shone there instead when no package is selected.
  - With the above, the behaviour for multiply selected packages doesn't sit well - the last clicked package is the shown info.  It doesn't mesh well with the fact that multiple packages are selected in the view.
  - The Update List, Upgrade All, and Dist Upgrade buttons, while very useful to an apt-knowledgable person, aren't that great for n00b's.  Better naming could be used here - I don't have a suggestion for how it could be clearer tho.  The -email is unavailable- folks might have some good insight on this, perhaps - they are very helpful.
  - The little arrows to represent Status aren't very clear.  Better/different icons should be used that more clearly represents the differing states.

Also, on a more frivolous note... the RH8/9 up2date installer has this nifty interface for installing package groups and individual components.  I don't know what they use to build this (a separate database or tags/info in the packages), but it's cool.  I also know that Debian and dpkg have their tasks, which are now flags in the control file iirc.  Having synaptic support these with an interface similar to up2date would be excellent for n00b's.  Heck, I'd enjoy it - it makes things simpler/quicker/easier.  ^,^

Invalid User ID <#3528>

 

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Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
2003-04-19 mvogt Severity3 - Normal None
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