Feedback from evaluation in a corporate environment

[Philippe Lhoste]

On 12/01/2010 07:21, Algis Kabaila wrote:
>> Sometimes more choices is simply bad.
>>
>> Paul.
>
> Too many choices is always a bad option!

I have to disagree here.
It reminds me an author which wrote Windows design was bad because there were half a dozen 
of ways to close a window vs. only one (or two?) on Macs (before OS X).
Sometime I just click on the X, sometime I use Alt+F4, sometime Ctrl+Q or Ctrl+W or even 
Esc if app allows it, sometime I right-click on the icon in the task bar and choose Close, 
sometime I even goes to the File menu and choose Exit (rarely!). And sometime I use the 
task manager for that!
Now, I am quite experimented with this OS, I feel all this information can be overwhelming 
for a newcomer.

Bazaar is a bit similar: it is nice to allows so much different workflows. But when you 
come here, you are confused, because you are not sure what you want to do.

So too many choices isn't a bad option. It is more a matter of documentation: perhaps the 
newcomers should be presented a reduced set of options, the most common ones, with hints 
there is more. Something that irritate me in MS Office (reduced menus), but then again, I 
am no longer a newbie... :)

Another possibility would be a wizard. Some GUI presenting some options, asking the user 
want they want to do: work on an existing source code dir, with or without secondary 
branches. Working on a central repository with commit access. Hacking an existing open 
source code without commit access to it. And so on. On next screens, the wizard would 
refine the questions to narrow down the kind of workflow the user would need. And at the 
end, would present a tutorial on the best way to do this workflow.

-- 
Philippe Lhoste
--  (near) Paris -- France
--  http://Phi.Lho.free.fr
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