Comment 52 for bug 149805

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 9:42 PM, sander <email address hidden> wrote:
>> I strongly oppose aginst this since I cannot find anything more
>> annoying for a user like this one. It is like you have the light go
>> out every two minutes in the basement. Very annoying. We should put
>> all control with the user.
>>
>> But you are right about the problem. I suggest that instead we have it
>> open by default but only display the basic presence control slot. All
>> states are now remembered between launches, see other post, so this is
>> possible.
>
> I still believe it is not annoying when you implement it exactly like
> I described. The key thing is that you set long enough intervals
> before the menu is automatically closed, and that the counter is reset
> every time the user puts the mouse above the control panel (the
> counter only starts working when the mouse is not above the control
> panel.
>
> Regarding you basement example of the light go off in the basement: in
> fact, in modern buildings, you very often see these days lights that
> automatically go on and off. The reason for this is that it is
> practically for you and that it saves energy. Examples:
> * You get home at night when it is dark and when you are in front of
> the door, an electronic eye detects you and switches on the light.
> Thanks to this light, you can easily put your key into the key hole
> (even when you drunk a bit ;-) ). You enter the house, and a few
> minutes later the light automatically switches off (so you can't
> forget doing that).
> * You walk into the corridor and the lights automatically swicht on
> thanks to an electronic eye. A few minutes after the eye does not
> detect any movement, the lights are automatically switched off. The
> advantage of this system is that you either don't have to have the
> lights always switched on (energy savings), or that you never can
> forget about switching the lights off again.
> * At my university, the lights automatically switch off when there is
> nobody in the room any more (or accidentally when students are too
> silent and sitting still :D )
>

We have the same kind of light outside our garage which is only lit up at nights
if someone moves close to it. I think we give up this parallele since
it is not fruitful.

> Summary:
> 1) Always open the control panel at Coccinella startup.
> 2) (new!) *Only* start the counter when logged on; *never* start the
> counter when logged off.
> 3) When logged on and the mouse pointer is above the open control
> panel, don't start the counter.
> 4) When logged on and the mouse pointer is moved away from an open
> control panel, start the counter.
> 5) When logged on, the counter is counting down, and the mouse pointer
> is moved above the open control panel again, reset and stop the
> counter. Start the counter again when the mouse cursor is moved away
> from the control panel, and so forth.
> 6) The counter interval is *long* enough to be not annoying (a few
> minutes), but short enough to help the user (you don't want to move
> backwards every 2 secs because that's the interval for the electronic
> eye when you are searching for the key hole while being drunk!)
> 6) The user always manually can open and close the control panel. So,
> the user has all control: he can close the control panel when he
> likes, he can open the control panel when he prefers, and he can keep
> the control panel open when he puts the mouse pointer above the
> control panel!
> 7) There is no counter when the control panel is closed. When the user
> opens the control panel again, the counter is there again and will be
> activated when the mouse is not above the panel (as said before).
> 8) When the countdown finished, the open control panel is automatically closed
> 9) I would suggest a *long* inteval of at least 10 secs, but maybe
> something in between that and 2 minutes will give a better experience.
>
> Short summary: the key is to use the right interval time that does not
> annoys the user and adds value for the user!
>

We need to reiterate this to see which problem we are trying to solve.
It was the one that a user wont find the slots from the beginning and
therefore misses a lot.
And we don't want to fill up the main window with all slots.
My suggestion is therefore: the initial vanilla state for first
installation is to show the control panel open, but only display the
mega presence slot and not any other. This makes it fairly similar to
the present situation, but with the addition of the PEP stuff.

So if the user doesn't close it, it wont disappear. And if he or she
close it they figure out how to open it again. And if they start
digging deeper, they'll find all the extra slots and how to control
their display.

I think this is a fairly elegant way of solving the problem to keep UI
very plain, but still retaining all the complexity underneath.

If we decided to implement your method it wouldn't be a good idea to
show all the slots for newcomers anyway, so we need to pick one single
slot that is the most basic.

My ideas above are now in cvs.

Mats