[openbeos-cdt] Re: .pkg installer user interface

  • From: "Waldemar Kornewald" <wkornewald@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos-cdt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:15:21 +0200

Hi Łukasz,
let's see how open you will be to criticism after this mail. :)

On 4/13/07, Łukasz 'Sil2100' Zemczak <sil2100@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.

If we get a much better design then I think radical changes are OK.
Let's also consider creating an installer UI that is simpler than the
BeOS one. If we don't like it we can still have your suggestion (needs
only minor fixes for compliance or wording).

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?

Maybe instead of "<Package name>" the window title should be "Install:
<Package Name>" to make it easier to identify?

I'd change the label "Groups" to "Installation Type" or something similar.

I think the tabs view should start at the same height as the list view
(instead of its label) to make it more obvious that both views are
connected. The list view's label could be replaced with a BBox to make
this even more obvious.

There could be capitalization issues, but I don't think we have agreed
on any rules, yet.

-------------------------------
The following suggestions would result in a different UI, so I want to
keep this part separate:

I like that you replaced the alert after pressing Begin with a simple
tab, but OTOH, do we really need that info, at all? It's still
available in the log files. Isn't it sufficient if you just select the
target location and that's it?

As far as I remember, many apps only have one single profile and there
are rarely more than three profiles. IMHO, a list view is only
appropriate if:
* you expect to have many entries
* switching between entries must be very efficient
* you must have an overview of all elements
I think that of those three only the last one might apply, but a
pop-up field could be better suited for this task and result in a more
compact UI.

Is there any need for splitting the installation volume and the
installation folder ("Install on ... in ...")? Why not have one pop-up
with the full path? The pop-up could automatically offer pre-defined
paths for every volume and a "Custom..." item for choosing your own
path (when paths can't be chosen "Custom..." would be grayed-out).

An alternative installer UI could look like this:

| Install: CoolApp2 |
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
| This is CoolApp2, a cool app for doing
| cool stuff under Haiku. It's even cooler
| than CoolApp1.
|
|- Installation Type: [Typical \/] ----------------------|
| Install everything the average user needs.
|
| Size: 15.4MB
|------------------------------------------------------------|
|
| Install To: [/Haiku/apps \/] (N Free)    [[Begin]] -|
|------------------------------------------------------------|

Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald

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