Hiding vs. locking functionality

Sven Burmeister sven.burmeister at gmx.net
Wed Jan 9 12:19:07 CET 2008


Hello!

When the "lock widgets" feature was introduced, it took me some time to 
realise that it was the reason why I could not change the wallpaper anymore. 
In fact I could not only not change it, but the whole menu-item was gone. 
Which common user knows/needs to know that the wallpaper is a widget?

Even worse for the "add applets" button which was gone some days later too. I 
almost filed a bug because I did not see the link between locking widgets and 
items disappearing from menus or the toolbox. Just because I lock a door, it 
does not disappear.

Hence I would like to propose that unless the user never saw that feature 
before, i.e. KIOSK mode, locking should not make the menu-items disappear but 
just lock them, i.e. disable their functionality.

Even if one assumes that the user gets the link that using "locking" in the 
context-menu on the desktop is the cause of items disappearing from that 
menu, there is no link to the toolbox that would make it obvious why the "add 
applets" disappeared. "Lock widgets" actually does not even state that one 
cannot add new ones, because for users the wallpaper/desktop is not a widget 
and hence adding to it does not contradict that those widgets already on the 
desktop are locked.

Sven


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