A solution: each users could customize this homepage, like iGoogle. (With some bundled options.)
-----Original Message----- From: Matthew Toseland <t...@amphibian.dyndns.org> To: devl at freenetproject.org Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 14:22:32 +0000 Subject: Re: [freenet-dev] Some (very) preliminary mock-ups of new UI > On Monday 08 February 2010 21:49:37 Ian Clarke wrote: > > 2010/2/8 Cl?ment Vollet <cvollet at gmail.com> > > > > > What do you put behind "casual"? Will this UI target newbies as well as > > > advanced users (an advanced user can not be interested in aiding the > > > Freenet > > > development effort), or is there a limit somewhere. > > > > I think by "casual" we are referring to people who want to search for and > > retrieve content, upload and share content, and participate in discussions. > > We are not referring to Freenet developers and testers, who will probably > > need to continue to use FProxy. > > I strongly object to this. We do not want to have two completely different > interfaces with two completely different looks and feels, and with a jarring > change when you go from one to the other. > > And who decides what is casual use anyway? Casual users in mainline China for > example will need to be able to add Friends, and set the security levels. And > we cannot afford to not ask people: the first-time wizard will have to remain > in place, and IMHO so will some visible indication of security level > (preferably via means of easily understood color coded icons, with brief > explanations in tooltips or dropdowns). Casual users interested in censorship > resistant blogging (IMHO an important demographic) will need to be able to > make a blog using FlogHelper. Anyone who uses Freetalk to chat will need to > be able to set trust levels (although this does not necessarily mean we need > the Community menu). And so on. > > And nothing in the PDF actually requires GWT so far. > > > > > And also, if the aim is to target all casual users (from newbie to > > > advanced), > > > how will this be acheived? (since I don't think they both have the same > > > workflow) > > > > The challenge will be that it can meet the needs of diverse users. If > > Google can do it (and Google's UI is one of the inspirations for the new > > mockup) then I think we can too. > > A two tier system where the advanced tier looks completely different will not > meet diverse needs, it will segregate advanced users from everyone else and > put people off making the transition. > > > > I think the difference is that designing the UI properly requires a lot more > > thought than the previous approach, which was basically to create the > > fastest and most obvious UI layer to expose the functionality we had > > implemented. > > > > To put it another way, good UIs are designed starting with the user and > > working backwards. FProxy was designed more-or-less from the back forward. > > There are other issues with user interfaces than meeting user expectations. > Sometimes those expectations cannot be practically met and they need to be > managed: Search is slow, a google style central box may exacerbate this. > Sometimes there are overheads that the user needs to be aware of (e.g. > security levels). And we need to seriously address the question of how to > deal with messages - everything from Freenet is updating itself to bookmark X > has updated to you have a message from peer Y or a Freemail from anonymous > person Z. > > Apart from messages, there is the question of where is the rest of the > functionality? > - Queued downloads/uploads. Arguably only needs to be shown if we have queued > stuff. > - Security levels as icons as I mentioned before. Or can we get away with > this somehow after the wizard? > - The blogging tool. > - Friends. Needs to be shown in any case because we want people to add > friends even if they only care about performance, and in some situations it > is the only way to get any sort of connectivity. > - Identity management. We are logged in as identity X, we can log out and use > a different one. Should be visible. Logged in identity is used for Freetalk > but probably also for other WoT apps too. > > ATTACHMENT: application/pgp-signature (signature.asc) > _______________________________________________ > Devl mailing list > Devl at freenetproject.org > http://osprey.vm.bytemark.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl >
