Review Request: Bug 198661 (Option to disable scroll wheel on taskbar)

[Gábor Lehel]

Okay. I don't want to get into a protracted argument so I'll just say
this and then leave it up to you: Obviously you can't please everyone.
You don't need to cater to the needs of every single person who files
a bug report. The goal should be to please the large majority of
people. Sensible defaults, in other words. (Even in the extended
meaning of "sensible defaults about which options to allow in the
first place"). If there's a couple of people who still don't like it,
they can patch the code themselves. In this case, the sensible
solution which would please the most people appears, to me, to be to
disable scrollwheel-switching on the taskbar by default, but offer it
as an option, and to just leave it enabled everywhere else. Disabling
it globally (even via an option) doesn't work: everywhere else
-besides- the taskbar, I *want* to be able to use things with the
scrollwheel; I interact with the pager exclusively in this way, for
example. On the other hand, enabling it globally isn't a perfect
solution either, when the taskbar gets scrolled by accident ten times
for every time that it's done intentionally[1]. And offering a
separate option for every single widget is obviously not a good
solution either.

This isn't simple nor elegant. But what you get at the intersection of
humans and computers isn't simple nor elegant. Part of usability is
finding those places where the elegant model in the code doesn't mesh
up well with actual human behaviour, and then putting ugly hacks in
the code to accomodate it. (I guess something which would be helpful
here is a section in the HIG regarding when and how widgets should
respond to scroll events with things other than scrolling. I'd be
willing to help draft one, actually, but given that I'm just a dumb
programmer and not a usability specialist, I'm not sure my help would
be welcome. If it would, where do I inquire?)

(And obviously, I was assuming here that I'm part of the "large
majority" myself, but if that's not true and most people do actually
want to enable/disable scrollwheel actions *globally*, then I'm the
one who should be getting shafted. But the same principle should
apply, I think.)

[1] To be entirely accurate, I don't seem to actually have problems
with this any longer. I guess after suffering long enough I adjusted
and learned new habits. But it was very annoying for a time.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:
> On December 19, 2009, Gábor Lehel wrote:
>> decided to put a giant clock or pager along the middle of their bottom
>> panel they would have similar issues, but who does that?
>
> it happens less frequently with smaller targets, but it does happen. and yes,
> we do get reports about it. so no, i'm not interested in patches that fix it
> in one place or even multiple patches that fix it in multiple places with
> independent settings. one global option should do.
>
> --
> Aaron J. Seigo
> humru othro a kohnu se
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