To: openbeos-cdt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, DarkWyrm <darkwyrm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:10:22 +0200
Hi,
During the nearest few months, I will be working on the BeOS .pkg
installer for Haiku. To be utterly successful in this task, I would like
to ask the Usability/Design Team for help in designing the main
application user interface. I hope this mailing list is still in use -
in case it is not, I'm also sending a copy of this e-mail to DarkWyrm.
The user interface design I proposed for my GSoC project is very similar
to the original BeOS SoftwareWallet version - with some minor
differences only. The concept sketch can be found here:
There were a few reasons for my decision of partial re-usage of the
previous design - the first one being familiarity. Since eventually
there will be a lot of old BeOS-timers using Haiku, radical change of
the interface doesn't seem a good idea - considering the fact that the
.pkg format is very strictly related to BeOS too.
The second reason was usability. I personally think that the
SoftwareWallet-way was very intuitive, easy and straightforward in its
original form (except a few, small drawbacks of course).
Now for the differences. Instead of a single installation information
label on the left side, I propose a tab view with two tabs available.
The first one would include the previous information (size, free space
etc.). The Files tab, however, would include a directory tree of the
package files to be installed and their installation paths. The same
could be seen after clicking the Begin button in SoftwareWallet, opened
as a separate window. In my opinion, this was way not too intuitive,
presumably if someone just wanted to know the files being installed by
the package.
This can be seen on the simple concept above. What do you think?
I would like to consult this design with the whole Usability/Design
team. Your opinion regarding this matter is crucial, since usability is
a key feature of the Haiku operating system. Currently, I'm open to any
propositions, critiques and flames regarding this matter.
