[Kstars-devel] KStars usability

[Pablo de Vicente]

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El Jueves 11 de Septiembre de 2003 02:25, Jason Harris escribió:
> Hi,

Hello,

>
> Excellent!  I think one of our big strengths is our beautiful, intuitive
> interface, and I really want to maximize this however we can.  So, please
> thank her for the valuable input :)
>
> > 1. The "toggle" icons somewhat confused her. She didn't know if something
> > was "off" or "on", she figured that eventually as she noticed objects
> > being drawn and hidden from the skymap. But even at a later time, I asked
> > her to find Mars and she did, but only the label was there and not Mars
> > pixmap because solar system was off, and she wasn't aware that she turned
> > it off a while ago. Therefore, we need a visual indication if an icon is
> > toggled off or on, maybe we can make the off state for a certain icon a
> > bit gray? Any ideas?
>
> Hmm...these toggle buttons are supposed to look "pressed" when they are on
> already.  Maybe it's your widget style?  It's definitely less obvious with
> some styles.  I don't think we should grey out inactive buttons because
> that implies that they are not pressable.  We could perhaps darken the
> icons when off...

 In my case the buttons appear sunken, when they are ON, but the frame is so 
narrow that I had not noticed before. I have noticed today just because you 
mentioned it. Perhaps the way to fix it is to decrease the size of the icons 
leaving more space to the frame so that when the buttons are pressed they 
appear clearly sunken.

>
> > 2. She expected to find the "Find Object..." menu item under View, not
> > Focus.
>
> Yeah, that's an idea.  But everything under Focus deals with recentering
> the view, which is why Find Object is there.  I think instead of moving it
> to View, we should rename the Focus menu, but I can't think of a better
> name for it (Pointing? Center on? Look toward?  these are all worse than
> Focus, IMO)

 I agree with Jason, we should not include this in menu View. I find that now 
it is included in the correct menu, however the word Focus has always 
misslead me, and in Spanish I have translated it as "Apuntar" which means 
"Pointing" or more exactly "Point at". Focus for me (being spanish) is 
related to the action of focusing a lens, or to say it with other words to 
finding the best location to get a sharper image. However I cannot suggest a 
good english word for obvious reasons :-). May be Target?, or is this only 
use for military purposes?.

  In the View  menu we should put in the future other modes of vision of the 
sky like the Solar system view or the Neighborhood of the Sun. I think that 
zoom is correctly included there. 

> > As far as the Tools menu went, she didn't understand most of it (nor was
> > she expected to). But I think she would be able to understand them if she
> > can get immediate help about that specific tool. Maybe we need to include
> > a "help" button at each of those tools (buttom left) and link it
> > directley to the corresponding entry in the handbook? Is this possible or
> > we can _only_ open the handbook main page?
>
> Maybe also tooltips on the menu items themselves?  Is that possible?

 Sometime ago I though of including tips in the calculator modules, and I made 
a small test using the Designer. Unfortunately, in that case it is not 
possible to use the What's this? help because the widget locks the KStars 
main screen and one cannot access that button. 

> Help buttons linked directly to the appropriate Handbook chapter is a great
> idea.  I know it's possible; KMail's Configure Filters tool has such a
> button.

 I have never seen that, but it would be a nice feature.

 I think that all changes related to tooltips should be addressed during the 
freeze period.

>
> thanks!
> Jason

regards,

Pablo.
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