Usability issues
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tache
Joined: 2004-08-09
Posts: 15 |
Posted: Tue, 2004-12-14 10:19
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Let me start off by saying that I really enjoy the new G2 software. That said, in using it day to day, I am feel that there are a few serious usability issues. 1 - Permissions - Need to have a default permissions setable to the user. If you upload a lot of pictures it is a real bummer to have to go into the each picture to reset the permissions. Think about how long it takes to select the permission option on the picture popup menu, reset each permission (three changes in my case, which is three steps), then select the back to album link. In uploading large sets of pictures, 100+ in some of my cases, you can see how many steps that is. Also, having the "Hide Photo" option from G1 in the picture popup menu is really needed. 2 - Upload - Upload of any sort is not possible for all browsers. In particular Microsoft Explorer on Mac OS 9.2.X. The grey box with the "Add Items" button is not present in this browser. In fact no buttons are ever present which appear in those grey action areas. I also have strange random issues of the same sort with upload action area on the Windows Firefox. MS Explorer on Windows seems to work without any issues. 3 - More Permissions - The ability to have a popup menu of all possible choices whenever the group name or user name is required for use entry. It can be tough to remember those names. Also, having case sensitive names always messes me up, requiring "Everyone" and not being able to enter "everyone" as a group name is an example. 4 - Photo Summary and Detailed EXIF displays - It would be nice to turn off the photo EXIF displays for the viewers of the photos, but to have it on for the owners of the photos. I do not want the viewers to have those details. 5 - Layout - On my MS Explorer , on the main page, the album gets popped down below the left side items when I have more than 4 (4x4) items in the content area. On MS Firefox, it seems to activate the scrollbar, which is nicer I think. I am not sure you have control of this one. |
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Posts: 113
I have, in fact, "fixed" this bug, though for some reason it hasn't gained much attention from the G2 developers.
To fix it in your local copy of Gallery 2, open /templates/layout.css.php and search for #gsAlbumContents, #gsAdminContents, #gsOtherContents. Below it, insert a new line and paste the following:
/* Hides from IE-mac \*/ * html .#gsAlbumContents, #gsAdminContents, #gsOtherContents {height: 1%; float: normal; position: absolute;} /* End hide from IE-mac */I'm not sure exactly why this works, but it works. Does it change the display at all in Internet Explorer on the Mac? (It shouldn't)
As for the rest of your comments ... I'll keep them in mind when/if I'm working on related sections of the UI. Thanks
Posts: 328
CSpotkill, yes, it does work! I applied that fix to CVS, hadn't seen your comments on that before. Thanks! I am sure people will appreciate it.
Why wouldn't we want this fix on IE/Mac too? Does it work differently than IE/Win?
Posts: 328
Items added to an album inherit the permissions of that album. So just set the permissions you want for the items on the album before you start uploading the files on it. Also changes done to permissions of an album are propagated to its children by default, there is a checkbox in the permission interface to deactivated if this is not wanted.
There is a pending UI-task about making the permissions page more "user-friendly", which should cover what most average user needs without going into much details like we have it now. So the user could use the "easy" permission system or the current "advanced" mode (just like on WinXP). I think there has been an UI-proposal on that already, but this work has stalled. Bharat should know more, maybe you can find some info in the forums.
The easy permission system should make it easy to withdraw all permissions for an image to everybody but the admin, which is sorta like hiding the picture.
This seems more like a CSS issue of rendering the buttons. I haven't heard of it. Unfortunately no other current G2-developer has the possibility to test on MacOS, so maybe you could help track down where the problem is?
I haven't had a problem, also using Firefox. Could you provide more details on what you do, what you expect and what exactly happens?
Any user/group input box already has a mechanism of auto-completing the typed usernames. I can imagine more improvements in the area to get to an interface similar to what Google now has at Google suggests.
That should be easy, just a new permission to be able to view exif comments. Haven't heard of that request before, but you might file it in the RFE tracker.
This seems to be solved now by the solutions offered by CSpotkill, let me know if it worked for you!
Thanks for your input!
Cheers,
Ernesto
Posts: 113
I just got the email about the CVS change - but you changed #gsComments instead of #gsContents. To be honest, I'm not sure position:relative is required for #gsContents but it worked and I didn't feel like experimenting further to find out. (Edit: No, it doesn't have any effect. So you can remove the position: relative; part)
Yes. This seems to be a common myth, but Tantek Çelik, who was in charge of the IE/Mac rendering engine, managed to squeeze in the best web standards support available at the time. Unfortunately, IE/Win tarnished Internet Explorer's reputation, so this fact seems to have been forgotten by most people. Internet Explorer 5 on the Mac also introduced many features we now take for granted in web browsers, and some still haven't been copied yet, like the Web Scrapbook. Even now, IE 5 for Mac is the best web browser available, if you're running OS 9 and can't use Safari.
For all the nitty-gritty, see Tantek's "Moving On ..." email from when he left Microsoft (he now works at Technorati):
http://tantek.com/log/2004/06.html
Edit: IE5/Mac also supports alpha-transparency on PNG. It's *just* IE/Win. How lonely that browser must be. :/
Posts: 15
Okay, I can look into the MacOS issues, but I need to know what file to look at to speed the process. I guess I will look for the CSS pages.
On the setting the permissions issue, in the current drop, I still think that even given the inheirted permissions, it is not user friendly. This is because, in my case, the default permissions are to allow other users to view the album, and when I upload a large set of photos, only about 10% make are made viewable to the whole public, while the other 90% is used by a small set of other users.
I think that the easy permissions solution might solve this.
Posts: 8601
for now you might try creating a temporary album, give it the permissions you want for a certain set of photos, upload the photos into that album (they inherit those permissions), then move the photos where you want them.. i'm pretty sure the permissions won't change when you move items around.
Posts: 238
I need to look at CSpotkill's hack a bit more closely. It caused the footer to roll up to the top behind the sideBar and gsContents in IE 6. I messed with it a bit but wasn't able to reproduce the benefits of the hack and keep the footer visible. I haven't given up quite yet. Let me know if anyone figures this one out.