Hi, I think there is a little misunderstanding. I am not referring to the partitioning phase during the installation but to the YaST module in the already installed system.
In my opinion, the very first dialogs should a selection of use cases, defined by what partitioner finds on the current disk e.g.:
(x) I want to shrink Windows installation and use the free space for openSUSE installation ( ) I want to use all disks for openSUSE system ... ( ) I want to run an expert partitioner
Yes, something like this is useful during installation. I would definitly like to have it there!
Partitioner needs more than a face-lifting,
I know, I was just kidding :-)
People want to use our system, they don't want to install it more than once and not all of them "want to learn more" ;)
This might be true for users with some experience who are also doing some developing/system administration stuff, but the Newbie just wants to perform some basic tasks (Internet, Office) and not "waste" time in exploring the system.
BTW: I've attached some screen-shots from Ubuntu installation 6.06. Just to add some more ideas into the Partitioner Ein Topf :)
Thanks for the ingrediencies :-)
To be honest, I wouldn't understand this overcrowded dialog very well:
Thanks for the feedback!
When doing such a complicated task as creating new partition or resizing some old one definitely is, it's better to provide enough additional information that wouldn't fit into one dialog (for all such cases together). We really need to provide textual help for such tasks to make users understand what they do and why...
True. But on the other hand if you look at the Ubuntu pop-ups there is not really that much the user can input there (not speaking of the missing additional information). So maybe we can put up some partitioning tutorial in the help or much better: on opensuse and then link to that? The other point is, that besides the Newbie-user there are also the highly experienced users who know very well what to do and are pretty annoyed by too much text (at least thats what I have been always told about them). The partitioner targets mainly people who know about partitioning, so the additional challenge would be to provide some additional newbie information somewhere.
Pop-up windows do the job very well, just as Partition Magic or Ubuntu already do.
But wouldn't it be better to save the user the action of clicking on a button when we can display the necessary information in one dialog?
I wouldn't be so strict about not-displaying the graphical overview. Sure, IT administrators wouldn't probably need it, but a common use with, let's say, maximally three disks would love it.
Maybe. But how to distinguish between an environment with 500 hard discs and 3 hard discs?
One picture can tell more than a thousand words...
hehe
I don't, of course, want to discourage you, just, please, think about it in the way we need to make newbies understand also to prevent from data-loss.
No, I didn`t take this as a discouragement. I just wanted to start the discussion about that difficult topic. I was also aware that the mock-ups are not the super solution but you have to start at some point. I also am very curious about other feedback :-) Cu, Martin -- Martin Schmidkunz User Experience Specialist martin.schmidkunz@novell.com +49 (0) 911 740 53-346 ------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) ------------------------------------- Novell, Inc. SUSE® Linux Enterprise 10 Your Linux is ready http://www.novell.com/linux -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ux+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-ux+help@opensuse.org