GNOME 2 Must-fix list Proposal - Control Center

Interaction / Organizational Issues

• Follow the appropriate dialogue standards once they are finalized. This point will be made more specific at that point to aid in implementation
• Sawfish preferences need to be completely reworked. Most of the options should go away, or be deprecated into an "advanced user" system (even that is of dubious value for many of Sawfish's options). The user should not be exposed to the notion of the "Window Manager". That means that most of the remaining sawfish preferences will need to find better homes than "Window Manager". What is "window cycling", "shade hover", "miscellaneous", "matched windows", etc ?!? Bug Report
• Default applications needs to use the same "backend" as the File Types & Programs capplet. It should be a beginner's window into the same settings as file types & programs sets. That also means that File Types & Programs needs to be extented to include URL handlers. Bug Report
• We assume the Sawfish appearance capplet will go away in favour of metathemer. Bug Report
• Capplets should have their name in the window title bar Bug Report
• The bell settings under keyboard should be in sound, or at least better explained (it took us a while to figure out what the heck that tab was for). Better yet, the bell tab should be removed altogether or moved into the cracklets section of the control center. Bug Report
• The sound capplet as it stands today should be removed. Having a beginning user preference for "enable sound server startup" is archane. If it really needs to exist (yes, I have toggled this myself, because libesd is broken and causes applications to hang ifit finds a broken server...a fix is in CVS so we just need a release of libesd) it shouldbe in the cracklet section. (That said, I can think of useful things to have in a sound capplet, its just that the existing items aren't it :-) Bug Report
• The HTML Viewer should not be in the main section. In fact, in the case where GtkHTML is used for interfaces (very distasteful, but a fact of life it seems) it should use GTK+ font preferences by default. How can the user know what changing "HTML viewer" will change? It probably won't change their web browser, but it'll change applications like Evolution. That's an archane technical detail, don't expose it to the user. Bug Report

Icon Issues

It is hard to think of more usable icons in a vacuum since usability & artistic principles need to be balanced. Suz would love to work interactively with whoever will redesign these icons (Tigert? Jimmac?) to give them the right look and feel while still being usable. It is hard for us to give good suggestions without visually seeing the results of the suggestions. An iterative process works much better.

• The "Main" icon currently uses a body part. Body parts (hands, arms, feet, heads, eyes) should be avoided because various cultures will find them offensive or insensitive. In user testing the toolbox icon faired well, so perhaps either a toolbox or just a tool itself should be focused on. There is really no need for the hand (plus the way the hand is holding the wrench looks very agressive). Bug Report
• Background Icon is hard to understand. "It looks like a tiny drawer is overlayed over the monitor" is what Suz perceived the icon to be. We suggest having a simple monitor with a background suggesting an image, and a simple window open on the desktop to differentiate it from the screensaver icon. Also, the monitor doesn't look very much like most monitors, it looks more like a Mac Classic or an iMac (rounded edges, no stand, big area for buttons), but that is a minor gripe. The paintbucket isn't a bad idea, but it would be better to have it a little larger. We suggest having a simpler monitor (buttons on the face etc are extraneous) that looks more "right" shapewise, with a flower background (tigert's daisy background would work nicely), and perhaps a simple window floating above it, and a large drippy paint-bucket in front of the monitor. Bug Report
• The Default Applications icon looks like the classic installer icon. The imagery of the floppy and the CD communicates user installation more than "selection of applications to fufill particular tasks". The name is also not clear. We are having trouble suggesting a better name / icon, but the current ones really don't work. Bug Report
• Screensaver Icon. The floating hand is bad for the same reason as (1), however even aside from that I don't understand what this icon is communicating. We suggest using something similar to the logout icon. In user testing many users guessed that the logout icon was in fact to activate a screensaver. The stars/moon look has already been used in other environments to suggest screensaver, and users are familiar with it so we suggest perpetuating that. Same suggestion on making the monitor look more like a monitor. Bug Report