On 26/11/2007, Stefan Hundhammer <sh@suse.de> wrote:
So in the ideal case we would like to have a completely new approach. This is what that "radical change" was all about.
Maybe there is a different way than just placing a lot of icons in a window (with or without groups) and let the user figure out how to deal with it. Carefully taking care, of course, of all kinds of users, newbies as well as experts.
Failing that, maybe somebody has a good idea how to present the modules traditionally in an icon view, but in a way that does not overwhelm everybody when the window opens (the "show all at once" approach) or that leaves the user searching for the right module at most times (the icon groups or even icon tree approach).
This is what that was all about. This is what we ask your opinions for.
My thoughts on the matter are that I think one needs to take a step back from: "how easily can the user find what he/she wants within yast2-control-centre?" and have as the starting point "how easily can the user find what he/she wants within the Desktop?" Both KDE and GNOME have easier to use application launchers and configuration organisers now. I think some of the yast modules might belong in one of these. This means thinking for each icon in YaST where a user might look for it from a blank desktop. Some examples: Network Card,Sound... - Fall into some nice categories like configuration, hardware - where would a user look for hardware configuration in the desktop, where do other operating systems keep such configuration options? Kiwi image creation,Log viewer - More applications than configuration in my opinion. All the AppArmor[sic] modules - A logical group of modules that maybe doesn't fit anywhere nicely. Software Management - Where do other operating systems keep add/remove software etc? So what is the point of the yast2-control-centre as it exists today? It is saying "This application, or configuration is arbitrarily different to all the others on your system, so it's in a different place". I don't believe that just because something is implemented with the YaST platform it should therefore automatically be in a special YaST2 control centre, this becomes increasingly clear as the number of YaST modules increases. Whether this means putting some of the yast modules in system-settings/gnome equivalent & some in kickoff/main-menu, or whether it means having a "hardware control centre", a "server control centre" etc, or something else entirely I don't have an answer for, having not researched it. I'd just like to see the appropriate place for exposing a YaST module to a user considered from the desktop level, than "where does it go in yast2-control-centre". Of course if modules are exposed in various logical places in each desktop, this does not preclude still having a yast2-control-centre for existing users who are used to it, and so existing documentation is still accurate, and so there is still a way to discover the modules in ncurses. -- Benjamin Weber -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org