Bugzilla – Full Text Bug Listing
| Summary: | [RCP] Workspace Launcher dialog should mention how to create new workspaces | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Eclipse Project] Platform | Reporter: | Andre Weinand <andre_weinand> | ||||
| Component: | UI | Assignee: | Platform UI Triaged <platform-ui-triaged> | ||||
| Status: | CLOSED WONTFIX | QA Contact: | |||||
| Severity: | normal | ||||||
| Priority: | P3 | CC: | eclipse, jeem, Kevin_McGuire | ||||
| Version: | 3.0 | Keywords: | helpwanted, usability | ||||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||||||
| Hardware: | All | ||||||
| OS: | All | ||||||
| Whiteboard: | stalebug | ||||||
| Attachments: |
|
||||||
|
Description
Andre Weinand
I've found the current workspace launcher dialog also makes it too easy to create a new workspace unintentionally. For example, I have an existing workspace at D:\newrcpws\plugins\, but I'm always forgetting that this is the one with the plugins\ subdirectory; so I just select D:\newrcpws\ and it merrily creates me a new workspace there. I think it generally better if UIs clearly call out the difference between opening an existing workspace (recognizable by the presense of a ".metadata" subdirectory) and creating a new one. We could add a dialog saying something like, "The selected directory doesn't contain a workspace, do you want to create one here?", but that might be too much nagging? -Andrew Does anyone have any current thoughts on this bug? The intent is to have the launch dialog be minimally intrusive since this is the first interaction that new users will have with the eclipse tool. As it works right now its possible to start the recognizable eclipse ide by just hitting enter once. I'm concerned that users will be turned off / confused by the extra confirmation step. A potential solution would be to create the "Do you really want to create a new workspace" dialog but only use it if there is already a known workspace. This means initial users would never be prompted for confirmation (which makes sense since they have no choice but to create a new workspace) while repeat users would be prompted in order to avoid accident creation of new workspaces. I guess this confirmation dialog would need a "do not nag" checkbox and an associated preference. What do people think? Created attachment 13300 [details]
screen shot of powerpoint 2000's welcome wizard
Jim and I talked about this one for awhile, here's a summary.
The powerpoint dialog is a good example of forcing the distinction between
creating an area and selecting an existing one. However, this isn't directly
transferable to eclipse since the equivalent of a "presentation" is a "project".
The workspace is more than just the data the user will be working on, its also
the place where preferences, and other things that affect the workbench itself
are stored. So the idea of a "workspace" is really a level higher than what's
being asked for in the powerpoint dialog.
However, that example does address one of the trade-offs that we're dealing with
-- it clearly distinguishes between creating a new workspace and reusing an
existing one. I think that the biggest contributor to that distinction is using
a list box for the recently used workspaces. Our current dialog combines
workspace creation and selection of old workspaces in the single dropdown. The
create/select distinction and the list box are good ideas.
However, we would need a browse button for both options, in one case the user
may want to create a workspace some some other drive, etc. In the other case,
the user may want to open an existing workspace that this installation of
eclipse has never seen. I'm worried about confusing errors when the user
happens to follow one path but winds up meaning the other, e.g.,
a. choose "create new"
b. choose "browse"
c. select a directory that is already a workspace
To maintain a rigid create/select distinction means forcing the user to cancel
until the initial dialog and then start down the "select existing" path and then
re-select the workspace in the browser. It might be possible to have a 3-option
confirmation dialog at point (c), i.e., Overwrite/Reuse/Cancel. The advantage
is that it saves the user time, the disadvantage is that its confusing.
The options are fairly easy to implement, so I'd like to try a few of them out
to see how each case works.
The UI hall of fame has a good example of how to do this. The sample is from an earlier version of visual basic and is shown at http://digilander.libero. it/chiediloapippo/Engineering/iarchitect/mfame.htm#FAME5 . An image of just the startup dialog is at http://digilander.libero. it/chiediloapippo/Engineering/iarchitect/vbstart.gif We might be able to make something that looks nicer than the tabs, but as a minimum the tabs make clear the distinctions mentioned in comment 5. If it's just an issue of preventing accidental workspace creation why not just have a label on the current dialog that is normally empty, but shows a message similar to "This workspace does not exist, and will be created." if the workspace isn't found. Re comment 7 The intent is to have the launch dialog be minimally intrusive since this is the first interaction that new users will have with the eclipse tool. As it works right now its possible to start the recognizable eclipse ide by just hitting enter once. I'm concerned that some users will be turned off / confused by the extra confirmation step. [since this bug isn't Mac specific, setting Hardware and OS fields to All] Hello all, it's been a while since this bug was discussed, and I am still accidentally creating workspaces all over my system (mostly because the dialog pops up while I am typing in the shell). There were different ideas discussed, but I think we really need only minimal features to make everybody happy: - A new checkbox "create this workspace if it does not already exist". - The checkbox is ticked by default on a new installation (and/or when the list of "last remebered workspace locations is empty). If/when the checkbox is deselected, we remember this as default for the next start. - If the checkbox is not clicked, do not continue with creating a new workspace, but display an error dialog. Could anybody implement this, please ? :-) Cheers, Tom. Prakash is now responsible for watching bugs in the [RCP] component area. This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant. This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. As such, we're closing this bug. If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it and reopen this bug. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant. -- The automated Eclipse Genie. |