New ZeroConf Spec

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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On Jul 7, 2006, at 7:07 AM, Paul Sladen wrote:
>
> On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
>>
>>> (2) when a zero-conf aware application start up and avahi is not 
>>> running, then the user would be presented with a pop up question:
>>
>> It's then not obvious from the UI how to turn off service discovery
>> again, while it should be.

This is one of the reasons checkboxes in confirmation alerts are the 
spawn of the devil. :-) (The other being that they trick developers 
into thinking that confirmation alerts are more tolerable than they 
really are.)

> Maybe a libnotify drop-down from the little avahi icon;  I'm sure mpt 
> can come up with a cunning usable scheme.
> ...

Suggestion: Replace the alert with a checkbox in each relevant 
application's preferences. This has the major advantages of (a) not 
being an alert, and (b) letting the software present the choice in 
terms of things you might actually want to do. ("Share my music", as 
found in Rhythmbox, is something humans are interested in doing; "Would 
you like automatic discovery of other computers sharing rhythmbox 
service?" is not.)

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