gnome terminal

[Sebastian Heinlein]

On Fri, 2006-01-20 at 11:21 +0100, John Nilsson wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-01-19 at 13:07 +0100, Quim Gil wrote:
> > My point is, real new users don't even notice when they are sudo-ing.
> > They don't open the console. They just perfom actions through the GNOME
> > interface and sometimes they are prompted for a password. That's it.
> 
> Not exactly on topic, but very much related.
> 
> >From a usability point of view the current way of doing gksudo behind
> the scenes i sub-optimal.
> 
> There are two usability problems that I can think of:
> 
> 1. There's a poor mapping between potentially harmful operations and the
> need to enter password. As it is now the users has to enter the the
> password just to get information (package explorer, disks-admin and
> stuff like that). There is no mapping between this password dialog and
> the buttons -- those that do the actual harm -- that happens to be
> available in those applications.
> 
> 2. The password dialog isn't consistent. Some operations sometimes pops
> up a password dialog, and sometimes they don't. (I'm talking about the,
> very convenient, sudo time out). So sometimes it's regarded dangerous
> enough to require a password, and sometimes it's OK? Most importantly,
> there is no visibility of this behavior.
> 
> Wouldn't it be better to always show the password dialog on potentially
> harmful operations, BUT have the password prefilled if the timeout
> hasn't been reached? (It would probably be a good thing to tell the user
> exactly what it is that is cached and how long until it will disappear).
> 
> 
> One thing to experiment with is to include a more detailed description
> of what is to be done in the gksudo dialog like this:
> 
>  ___________________________________________
> |                                           |
> | Please enter password to install the      |
> | these packages:                           |
> |      _______                              |
> |     | pkgA  |                             |
> |     | pkgB  |                             |
> |      ```````                              |
> |              __________________           |
> |   Password: |********          |          |
> |              ``````````````````           |
> |              ______   ________            |
> |             |Cancel| |Continue|           |
> |              ``````   ````````            |
> ````````````````````````````````````````````
> 
> Maybe even include a little [?] button to trigger a little pop-up
> explaining why installing packages could be harmful. 
> 
> Regards,
> John
> 
> 

Last week I filled a bug against gksu, since it uses a too technical
language: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gksu/+bug/28716

Perhaps gksu should follow the design of gnome-keyring-manager. See a
mockup here: http://librarian.launchpad.net/1518295/mockup-gksu.png

Regards,

Sebastian