Re: Changes in Preferences

Hello,

Rather than remove these preference options, why not make an "advanced" 
area?

* Send idle/away status to servers - I want the choice of whether or not 
to send that information... as mentioned before, privacy concerns.  The 
chat program I use at work used to send the Away message every time I 
locked my workstation.  Since our office is concerned about unlocked 
workstations, I lock it when I go to a coworker 2 cubes away, my session 
was going active/away in rapid-fire succession.... annoying.
* Sound preferences - These are always nice, because what if I don't 
want the standard "beep" for incoming messages.   What if I've used a 
set of sounds accross chat programs and I recognize the sounds and know 
what happened without having to look at my computer.
* Use Alternate Browser - I know that I always like to be in control of 
what browser is used for URLs (some KDE apps remove the option and only 
use Konqueror... annoying!).

I wouldn't say "bury" any of them, but I definitely don't think they 
should be removed completely.  Taking away user control is why I 
switched distros.  The distro I used was removing functionality from 
their GUI... sure I could still edit the config files by hand, but to me 
that's a step backwards.  If you must move them from the basic prefs, 
please simply put them in an advanced area.  I don't think the vast 
usability and configurability of Linux should scare anyone away, so I 
agree that not all options should be shown by default, but don't dumb it 
down so those of us that are more comfortable no longer have the options.

I apologize for the length of this reply, but I've noticed this seems to 
be an unsettling trend in Linux apps.  "Take away options so the user 
isn't confused."  I'm not a Linux zealot that says everyone should be 
forced through the painful learning process that a lot of us had to 
endure.  However, there are many of us that like more options and 
preferences.  It's one of the things that attracted me to Linux when my 
Amiga lost support, and I hadn't grown to dislike Microsoft as much as I 
do now.  So I say give the user a simpler preferences screen and put the 
less common ones under an advanced tab.  So that when the new users get 
more confident they don't find themselves wondering "why can't I do 
<blah> in this app?"

Laura

George Black wrote:

> Yo Siddhesh,
>
> If I remember correctly, another user wanted to get the latest Ayttm 
> to test and I was
> trying to give hin the commands needed. This was one of them:
>
> cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous-w94BVCp4ahQeNlHF0+d3UcDlaYrLISYHXqFh9Ls21Oc@public.gmane.org:/cvsroot/ayttm 
> co ayttm
>
> and I kept getting smilies for the :p and the :/ so he couldn't read 
> the code
>
> We finally used another chat client.
>
> If you move enable/disable smileys off the prefs screen, it would require:
> quitting Ayttm, editing the prefs file, and restarting Ayttm. This 
> seems like a lot of effort
> for a couple of lines in an otherwise smile laden conversation. I 
> would rather see you
> go in the other direction - possibly an "off for this post" in the 
> smiley box on the
> chat screen.
>
> George
>
> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 12:59 PM, Siddhesh Poyarekar 
> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 
> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     I'm looking to remove some preferences window as well as add some to
>     make it a little simpler for users. As Philip suggested, the following
>     could be removed:
>
>     * Send idle/away status to servers
>     * Sound Preferences
>     * Use alternate browser
>     * Debugging (could be buried someplace where the user need not run
>     into it all the time)
>
>     Also, I've also added the "Enable Smileys" option at the request of
>     the puppy linux devs. However, this seems to be an option that would
>     be required only by advanced users, who could just as well do it by
>     editing the prefs file
>
>     Everyone please pitch in with your suggestions.
>
>
>     --
>     Siddhesh Poyarekar
>     http://siddhesh.in
>
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