Please put features on this page that can be implemented in under one week of coding.

Most of the below ideas are "quick hacks" that greatly improve usability, but other ideas are welcome.

Ideas from DavidRichard's presentation:

  • Let people print documents without opening them.
  • Many people find zips confusing. Show them as regular folders in Nautilus (with a slightly different icon) and let them behave as regular folders.
  • Show an actions toolbar in Nautilus and other applications. (Email, Share, Copy to Desktop, etc.)
  • Use one consolidated print dialog. When a user prints 10 documents, they currently get 10 dialogs.
  • Add a "Print Screenshot" feature to the screenshot application. In an office setting, 99% of screenshots are printed and then discarded.
  • Add a "Drag Me onto the Desktop or into an Application" overlay to the screenshot application to help inexperienced users actually figure out how to do what they want to do with a screenshot they took.
  • Make it easier for normal users to make a launcher by simplifying the "Add Launcher Dialog" to a selection of any program from a list or "Other." Most people don't know what the computer wants from them with "Program Name," "Command Name," and "Icon."
  • Show more shortcuts in obvious places. Most people don't know how to see their desktop.
  • Warn people that renaming "foo.odt" to "foo.doc" doesn't change anything and tell them how they can change that in no more than two clicks. The right place to check for this is in nautilus/src/file-manager/fm-error-reporting.c:fm_rename_file() --- this is the function that all places in Nautilus UI use to start a file rename (callers of that function are UI stuff; children of that function are the Nautilus file management machinery).

  • Make it more obvious that users can add shortcuts to Nautilus' sidebar with a very obvious "Add a shortcut" button and by adding the words "Drag a folder/file here to create a shortcut" to the sidebar. FIXME: find the place to do this in Nautilus. In GtkFileChooser, start looking at gtk+/gtk/gtkfilechooserdefault.c:shortcuts_model_create() to implement this.

  • Add a very obvious "most often used" location/menu/?
  • Make the Key Ring application's purpose and use more understandable. How about Firefox style password saving?


CategoryUsability

Events/Summit/2008/GUIHackfest/IdeaDump/QuickFeatures (last edited 2013-11-25 17:49:13 by WilliamJonMcCann)