Logout dialog

Matthew Paul Thomas mpt at canonical.com
Thu Mar 2 01:40:02 GMT 2006


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On Mar 1, 2006, at 12:56 PM, Tristan Wibberley wrote:
> ...
> My Dad frequently stumbles over choosing between plain "log out" and
> "switch user", especially when somebody else happens to want to use 
> the computer as he has finished.
>
> Since locking the screen already has switch user functionality and
> switching users already has locking the screen functionality, wouldn't
> it make sense to merge switch user into the "Lock Screen" item in the
> System menu?

That would solve your father's problem, but at the expense of making 
switching extremely difficult to find. I rather think the item needs to 
be renamed to express the idea that it's *temporary* switching. "Switch 
User" is awful, awful wording.

> On a related note, I think the Lock Screen item ought to change its
> name, since it is not actually locking the screen (as the user
> understands it), it is just locking their own session (of course, in X
> Window System terms that *is* the screen, but most users don't know
> about that). Most novice computer users think of "Screen" being either
> the whole console (denial of service), or of the active dialog box or
> web page (none of which are what is meant). I'm pretty certain of the
> novice understanding of the word "screen" since my parents both use 
> the word "screen" in the manner I described and I used to work in an
> office/labourer's depot full to the brim with computer novices and
> nearly all of them used the word "screen" in the same way when 
> discussion computer actions.

Yep, when I worked in Internet cafés people would often come in and ask 
for a "screen" (do you want a keyboard as well? ha, ha, ahem). And 
IIRC, AOL did pretty heavy customer testing in coming up with their 
term "Screen Name".

Windows and Mac OS avoid this issue by not having a "Lock Screen" item 
at all, but having a quick way of activating the screensaver.

> ...
> As even an advanced user, I was stumped as to what the difference was
> between "Sleep" and "Hibernate" before I googled. Could "Hibernate" be
> renamed to "Power Down (hibernate)", "Sleep" to "Standby (sleep)", and 
> "Shut Down" to "Full System Shut Down". Or something like that? Users 
> should normally just hibernate, and I think this name change would 
> make that obvious.

In the medium term, the difference between "Sleep" and "Hibernate" 
should be abolished by letting Sleep suspend to disk *and* to RAM. So 
if you have power, waking up works quickly; and if you lose power for 
any reason, waking up still works. (This would also lessen the need to 
maintain lists of hardware for which the "Sleep" command should or 
should not be available.)

In the long term, the difference between "Sleep" and "Shut Down" could 
be abolished the same way: the computer could automatically turn itself 
off once it had been sleeping for a configurable period.

- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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