On 15 Feb 2007, at 01:16, Ann Sunhachawee wrote: > Here's the latest. you know what to do (feedback!): > http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nwam/UIDesign/ConfigUI/
Here are my usual raft of randomly-scoped comments then :) 1.1 Standalone - Not sure what UI design guidelines you're following now that we're in gtk territory, but if it's the gtk/GNOME guidelines, a dialog shouldn't have "Apply" and "Close" buttons-- "Close" implies that the dialog is instant apply, making "Apply" redundant. Should either have just Close, or Apply, Cancel and OK. http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/windows-utility.html#windows-instant-apply - Would try to come up with tab labels that don't include the words "Network" or "Configuration"-- the title tells us this is the network configuration dialog, so every tab should be dealing with the network and configuration :) Maybe something like "Status", "Connections", "VPN" and "Environment"? - If I change the environment manually from this dropdown list, will it have an impact on the content of the other tabs? That's kind of verboten in a tabbed dialog, maybe putting the "Current Environment" dropdown outside the tabbed area of the dialog would get around that, and might remove the need for a "Make Active" button on the Environment tab too. (On the other hand, it would also give the impression that you can have a different set of interface/link-enabling conditions for each environment on the Network Configuration tab-- can you? If not, I guess that puts an end to this suggestion...) - Where does the "Configure" button take you? Spec doesn't say, but I assume it opens one of the dialogs in ??4.4? 3.0 Environment configuration tab - Mockup shows a fair amount of empty space below the list-- perhaps this area could be used to give a textual summary of the environment that was selected in the list, just as an "aide memoir"? Obviously couldn't describe the entire environment here, but maybe just IP address, gateway and proxies or something would be useful. 3.4.5 Edit Environment dialog - Hmm, any particular reason to use a list down the side rather than tabs in this dialog? (Other than six being about on the boundary of usability for the number of tabs in a dialog.) - This isn't really a usability comment, but at least two of the 'tabs' in this dialog (Proxies and Services) are virtually duplicates of two standalone dialogs we already have in JDS. I hope we can figure out a way to maximise code re-use between the two, rather than having to copy and paste any changes every time. 4.1 Network Configuration, graph view - Will I be able to see and/or change the enabled/disabled/conditional state of interfaces/links here as I can in the list view? (Have probably asked this before, but does the graph view show all links, or only those that are currently enabled?) 4.2 Network Configuration, list view - As I mentioned in an earlier email, I'm not sure you'll be able to get gtk comboboxes to behave the way you'd like for the 'Enabled' column, here. - Suggest just "Edit Conditions" for the popup menu item, "Edit Enabled Conditions" sounds like slightly bad grammar (wouldn't it really be "Enabling Conditions"?) and also sounds like you're only going to edit conditions that are enabled :) - WiFi is a registered trademark, perhaps we ought to stick to using "Wireless" everywhere? (Or if we have permission to use it, I think the correct usage is "Wi-Fi"-- see http://www.wifialliance.com/) 4.2.3 Edit Enabled Conditions dialog - Version 1 - Wording is a little inconsistent with the "Environment Activation" dialog/tab, which has "Match all the following" and "Match any of the following". - "Enable/disable <xyz> unless the following rules are met" is a slightly roundabout way of saying things (also, shouldn't it be "conditions" rather than "rules"?), and isn't very prominent-- I didn't notice it at all at first. Either of those things might have led me to set up the wrong rule-- at first glance, it looked like I was expected to set up a rule that would (in this example) Enable wnet0, which is actually the complete opposite of what was required. For that reason, I think I prefer Version 2 in principle, but your suggested layout still demands careful reading, because both the 'available' and 'selected' lists are on display at the same time (and the first list I naturally read after "the following" was actually the wrong one!) A single checkbox list of all available connections would probably work better, I think-- then you would just check the ones that have to be connected for the condition to be true. (You could still offer the choice between "all" or "any" of the checked connections being necessary, too, if that's useful.) 4.3.2.1 New Link Aggregation - In JDS we tend to use the term "Restart" rather than "Reboot", although I appreciate this dialog in particular is aimed at people who know what "reboot" means. - In all then "New <blah>" dialogs that have a "Name" field, will a sensible default name ('aggr0', 'eth1', 'wireless2' or whatever) will be provided and pre-filled, rather than presenting the user with an empty text field? 4.3.5.1 New Tunnel - Here, and elsewhere that IP addresses are required to be typed in, have you given any thought to alternatives to a blank text field? E.g. four separate text fields, or a custom text field with three "." separators inserted in it? Either of those would give the user more of a visual cue as to what was expected. 4.3.6 New Ethernet - "Device" is just an empty text field... how will the user have any idea what to fill in here? 4.4.2.1 Edit Wireless - One thing that always annoys me on the Mac is that all known wireless connections appear in the "try them in this order" dialog, when in general I don't want it to even try connecting to all but one of them in any one Location. Would be nice if our UI didn't suffer from the same niggle, in a future revision at least. 4.6.1.1 Using DHCP - Possibly some scope for avoiding Yet Another Dialog here (the Options dialog)-- since there are only three DHCP options, could they maybe just be shown/hidden dynamically in the main dialog here if "Using DHCP" was chosen? 4.6.1.3 Multiple IP Addresses - Again, no need for a separate "Add" dialog here... clicking Add could just let me type directly into the table. (See the current JDS Admin->Network tool, DNS tab for an example of this.) 4.6.2.1 IPv6 Automatically - Just a suggestion that anywhere we have informational static text labels like the IPv6 address here, that the label should be specified as being selectable, so that users can copy and paste them elsewhere. 5.0 VPN - I really don't see much (any?) benefit in providing a VPN GUI if the user needs to know about things like command line options and processes to use it. I was expecting to see something more like OS X's VPN config tool, I guess; if we can't/don't support that sort of thing, I'm not sure I'd bother including this tab at all for a first release. (Either that or I'd turn it into a tab just for managing Solaris punchin connections, rather than any random VPN-type thing the user cares to add... but never having used punchin I have no idea what that would look like, or how useful it would be.) Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:calum.benson at sun.com Java Desktop System Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems
