Heiko Tietze wrote:Reason is that a) the main SySe screen is cluttered, and b) modules are not clearly separated. The idea (at least what I understood from the first thread) was to move parts of the main screen into the modules (a standalone KCM wouldn't have this 'neighborhood'). Before, we had two to three hierarchical levels: The categories, then modules or module groups, whereas categories were only shown on the overview. The proposed new hierarchy has one additional level.

Oh right, now I get it. To be honest I have no idea ._.
I thought about my tabs idea again and came to the conclusion that it wouldn't make sense i.e. the user would often the confronted with a sidebar that would only list "General" and "More/Advanced", which would add useless clutter. However, I would still want to integrate the "Advanced" button into the section list, with an option in SySe's settings to toggle the advanced mode globally.

I made a screenshot of how the sidebar looks in Window's Modern UI. As you can see a click on one of the menu items takes the user to a new menu and the title of the menu changes to the previously clicked menu item. The arrow next to it takes the user back to the previous menu. I don't know how this widget would be called.
I, personally, like that the different hierarchical level are more prominent this way. The downside though is that changing from one topic to the next would require the user to go back to the starting page and then choose one, given we assume the current main page proposal to be implemented. I guess it's just a matter of state.

What I, again personally, find remarkable about Microsofts SySe in the Modern UI is that it does present the user some "most used" options on the start page. They are not advertised as such but options the user is most likely to change. You can see it in the screenshot on the left. Everything under "PC-Einstellungen" is the main page. The different categories are displayed as a simple list to choose from, with no further explanation, and on the right of it are some quick change options. My point is that we should maybe consider something similar for System Settings. Not in the way to actually present properties to the user, but maybe ranking the topics according to how often they are used and maybe provide some quick link to some especially often used sections.
The downsides I could come up with are that it will most likely introduce more complexity to SySe's code (I'm not a programmer, I have no clue), and that it could confuse the users when the page changes on the next startup. We'd also need to have a way to keep track of how often the properties are changed.

Sorry for my lack of English knowledge. Please keep on asking to make things clear.

lol. Be assured that you are certainly not the one to blame here . I more often than not have weird "blackouts" where I don't get anything … I'm a bit simple minded .__.

Sogatori wrote:I made a screenshot of how the sidebar looks in Window's Modern UI. As you can see a click on one of the menu items takes the user to a new menu and the title of the menu changes to the previously clicked menu item. The arrow next to it takes the user back to the previous menu. I don't know how this widget would be called.

Looks like a drilldown navigation but without breadcrumb. You run into trouble with deeper hierarchies, I'd say it's okay for two levels but not more.

Anyway, I think we become obsessed a little bit with the redesign of SySe. So I vote for keeping the sidebar as it is (a simple listview that consists of items of the currently chosen category). We could add a simple dropdown with references to other KCM on the same level (what the mockup provides with the accordion), and perhaps some links to KCMs out of the context ('See as well...'). As a consequence the start screen is still more or less cluttered since we have to list all categories there.

What we completely missed to discuss is the alternative design (see 'Configure') with tree navigation. Too much icons in my opinion but it might be useful.

Is it really necessary to have the categories visible in the first screen?
That's one thing that always ticks me off in the Control Panel of Windows because I sometimes get lost in trying to find the thing I want to change in all the different visible options.

With the proper organization that is being planned right now, maybe the categories could just be shown after selecting the pretended topic?

prosmaninho wrote:With the proper organization that is being planned right now, maybe the categories could just be shown after selecting the pretended topic?

Some kind of expander... Sounds interesting, and challenging for the devs...

How about a System Settings organization that is a bit more different from Windows 7 control panel?



This is just to show another way of visually displaying the topics and associated categories with a separator between them (I guess you guys already noticed by now that I love to use the blue bar as a separator...).

Hi,

Just 'thinking out loud' and it's a bit different - what about this:

http://element-6.deviantart.com/art/Sys ... 1400770060

You hover the mouse over the 'All' arrow next to the topic 'Appearance' and you get a pop-up with links to all of the sections under that topic arranged into their categories, There's also a handful of quick links on the right of the front page to go straight to the most commonly used sections inside that topic so you don't have to go through the whole list if you want one of them.

I haven't thought about the layout of the actual pages within the sections or how you navigate around but there'd be a 'See also' section somewhere in there - that's a good idea.

ken300 wrote:Hi,

Just 'thinking out loud' and it's a bit different - what about this:

http://element-6.deviantart.com/art/Sys ... 1400770060

You hover the mouse over the 'All' arrow next to the topic 'Appearance' and you get a pop-up with links to all of the sections under that topic arranged into their categories, There's also a handful of quick links on the right of the front page to go straight to the most commonly used sections inside that topic so you don't have to go through the whole list if you want one of them.

I haven't thought about the layout of the actual pages within the sections or how you navigate around but there'd be a 'See also' section somewhere in there - that's a good idea.

I like the idea! Not sure yet whether the popup should appear on hover or click (on-hover popups have the disadvantage that if the cursor accidentally leaves the popup, it closes), but the general approach sounds interesting!

Damn, that looks awesome but I agree with colomar, I wouldn't make it mouse-over but would require a click.

Having looked at it again i agree.

If you were trying to click one of the 'quick links' down the right hand side then it would be very easy to have the mouse wander over the 'All' down arrow next to it & have the full list popup - that could get annoying!!

Can you guys make bullet-points of what are the advantages of the proposals?

Some of these are pretty, but I'll refrain myself from commenting on that, because the
System settings redesign is about the usability first, visual appeal second.

To start it off, this would be my list for the currently present layout (not looking at the messy organization of what's where):

+ Clear visual separation of the categories (level 0)
+ One-click access to any module (level 1)
+ Large click areas (Icon + Text)
- No visual connection between the start screen and modules
- No quick access to other modules while in one (click 'back', then choose a different module)
- Slower 2-click access to a page (level 2)
+ A common layout amongst systems (xfce, osx, gnome, cinnamon, unity etc. - at least judging from the screen-shots I found)

Add to that:

- It would need changing so that the pop-up screen remained within the main window when the lower topics like 'Hardware' were clicked, having a pop-up that came out of the main window would make it unusable on small monitors (I think the minimum we need to design for is 1024x768).

I just wanted to see if people were open to something like this, it is quite different to the current System settings! If so it can be improved & developed.

What do you mean by:

+ A common layout amongst systems (xfce, osx, gnome, cinnamon, unity etc. - at least judging from the screen-shots I found)

Unless it's deep in my subconscious I don't remember seeing anything like it before, can you give me some pointers to where you've seen a similar thing?

When you say:

- No quick access to other modules while in one (click 'back', then choose a different module)

I was intending to have a 'See also' list somewhere (either on the modules themselves or added into the design in some other way) like in Heiko Tietze's third mockup in the original post, that would help a little.

I agree that usability should be the top priority whilst looking at concepts - we can make it look pretty later!!

I'm talking about the current System Settings layout, not the proposals. I wanted everyone to comment on his proposal the same as I did for the currently implemented one.

Oops!

Apologies for obviously not reading your post thoroughly enough!!

Ivan,

Isn't it true to say though that:

+ One-click access to any module

is only true if you want the first section in a category?

To use the current System settings as an example , if you want 'Style' under 'Application Appearance' then you click on the 'Application Appearance' module on the System settings front screen and the 'Style' section is selected by default because it's the first one. If you wanted 'Icons' though you'd need an additional click to then go to that section (or am i missing some trick).

I think it's going to be a challenge to come up with a way of easily switching from any section to any other section because we've got soooo many, someone with a better imagination than me might have a good idea though!!!!

Essentially, I was referring
Level 0 - category
Level 1 - module
Level 2 - didn't give it a name, could be a page

Maybe it would be better if I called them Level 0 - 2. Will fix in the above post.

> because we've got soooo many, someone with a better imagination than
> me might have a good idea though!!!!

Agreed, but that's the challenge