Re: [Tails-ux] Tails Server GUI Design

sajolida:
>>>> I also prefer the shorter labels (at least for "Persistent",
>>>> "Auto-start") which can still have longer labels as tool tips. These
>>>> options will be the same for every service so people will get use to
>>>> them and shorter labels are easier to scan and recognize.
>>>
>>> I think George suggested more descriptive labels, but maybe I overdid
>>> this. Are tool tips still a thing? I don't recall seeing any in GNOME 3
>>> applications. Maybe I just didn't notice.
>>
>> Personally I find GNOME Settings very uninformative because of the lack
>> of a way to get information quickly for each option. I know sajolida
>> will hate me, but IMHO, feel free to diverge from GNOME on this point.
>>
>> What about adding some sort of "Help" indicator (perhaps some stylised
>> question mark) that can be place next to some short option label, and
>> that shows a pop-up when hovered over? They can even double as links to
>> the user docs when available.
>>
>> If pop-ups are a no-no, what about having some part of the panel
>> dedicated to showing the help? We display it when hovering over the
>> option's label or control.
>
> I still didn't check the GNOME HIG about popus (someone show do this)
> but I couldn't find any with a quick exploration of GNOME Settings. But
> I saw different other tricks:
>
> A. Some names of options are short and some are longer (eg "Workspaces
> only on primary display"). I think we should be afraid of making labels
> a bit long as long as we still try hard to make them as short as possible.
>
> B. Some options have subtitles in gray when needed. See for example the
> screenshot in attachment.
>
> C. Some dialogs have "Learn more" or other links to documentation. Which
> are rather global to a screen than specific to an option.
>
> I think that use each of these techniques when appropriate will solve a
> vast majority of our problems. If some precise problem cannot be solve
> by any of these, then only I'd be happy to discuss custom solutions.

While I don't think we should always adhere to the standard GNOME way, I
agree with you here sajolida. I think using A, B, and/or C will be
sufficient and we don't need to introduce pop-ups or a special help
label which updates on mouse hover, which is really something not seen
often in modern UIs. I'm no expert in this area, but I suspect that this
is due to the fact that users are more and more used to UIs on mobile
devices, which have no mouseover events. Also, while we're not quite
there yet, maybe we will support Tails on mobile devices someday , so
avoiding mouseover features will make this easier.