Re: [Tails-testers] 4.20 rc1

sajolida,

you wrote:
> Frederick:
> >>> In my opinion, the new Tails Connection Dialog comes at significant cost to user experience. I fully understand the importance of guiding new users through the connection process (and options), but after half a dozen Tails boots, the dialog becomes as much a hindrance as a help.
> >>>
> >>> A good compromise could be to initially present the current connection dialog, with the option of defaulting back to the Greeter's "Network" configuration tool. As Greeter settings can now be "sticky", experienced Tails users could then avoid the connection dialog altogether.
>
> The problem is that "experienced users" != "autoconnect", though Igtai
> understand it's your case.
>
> A user interface cannot be optimized for all user profiles at the same
> time. Prior to 4.20, Tails was optimized for people who don't experience
> network censorship and who don't care about hiding that they are
> connecting to Tor. In 4.20, we tried to give a more similar easy of use
> to the different profiles.
>
> As often when doing such big changes, it's hard to find the right
> balance on the first release. Now that 4.20 is out, I'll be interested
> in seeing how much more cumbersome it became for people like you anda
> adjust if needed.
>
> I feel like it's too early to take decisions on this, we'll gather more
> feedback in the coming weeks, and meanwhile refrain from going into
> lengthy design discussions here.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We agree on all points.

I have learned two important things about the Connection Dialog since my initial post:

1. Pressing the space bar immediately after the dialog opens, selects "Connect to Tor automatically..."
2. Pressing Enter executes the connection process.

These two key presses are convenient, but the dialog doesn't in inform the user of their existence. The dialog also does not visually indicate which element (option/button) has the focus.

I note also that the Tails Connection Dialog and Tail Greeter behave quite differently with regard to keyboard control. Given that one dialog immediately follows the other during startup, users might fare better if the two behaved more similarly.

sajolida, I fully support the Tails team's efforts toward making Tails a safer, better, easier to use operating system, and offer these observations in that spirit.

The Tails team rocks!

Frederick (aka alienpup)