"J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 11:01:01PM -0400, Shawn O. Pearce wrote: > > So I'd really love to do better. But frankly I'm at a loss here > > and just don't know what sort of change to make. > > The one thing that struck me when I fired up git-gui was that it wasn't > obvious to me which things I should try clicking on. Yea, that I have noticed with other newbies. I have recently had the chance to observe a few new users work with git-gui for the first time and I have noticed that they just don't quite know what to poke at and experiment with. Unlike with many other applications where its more obvious what's there for the poking... > For example: the buttons, drop-down menus, and check-boxes all cry out > to be played with. But the filenames in the lists at the top are less > obvious, and it might never have occurred to me on my own to right-click > on the diff hunks at the bottom. That just looks like passive colorized > text to me. It doesn't just look like colored text to me anymore. Which is a huge problem for me as an interface designer. I know what's there. BTW, the reason why there's a context menu in the diff viewer? I right clicked in there one day and nothing happened. The fact that nothing happen surprised the hell out of me. Even though I had written all of that code myself. So I went off and added that context menu. Later I realized I wanted to just stage that hunk. I could click on it all I want, but the $@!*@(!@* computer didn't do what I really wanted it to. So stage hunk was born and added to the context menu. That experience is actually true of much of the git-gui UI. Things happen there only because I've actually tried to do something, only to shock myself when I find out it doesn't work! I promptly write the patch and contribute it. :) > I don't know what sort of user-interface conventions say "play with > me!", though. Random ideas: > > - maybe the cursor should change shape over the diff hunks (or > just the headers?) That's actually a pretty cool idea. I might play with it just to see how I feel about the cursor changing and if it gives me any ideas about what might happen under it. Though as I write this email I'm thinking that if the cursor changed shape when it was over the diff hunk header I'd try to left-click the hunk header to get a reaction from the computer. > - maybe buttons, hunk headers, file names, etc., should all be > in the same color? > - maybe the hunk headers could benefit from a little more > decoration? I don't know how to do that without just making > the display look more cluttered, though. > - maybe left-clicking on diff hunks should do something too? I just had a thought of putting an actual button icon in the first column of the hunk header lines. If it looks enough like a button icon thingy, users might just click on it. And when they do we can present that diff pane context menu, and look, they can stage their hunks! ;-) Just a thought. Utterly random too. Musta been that alpha particle slamming into a neuron. Thanks for the ideas. Its certainly given me some things to experiment with in the next week or so when I can find the time. -- Shawn. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
