[GNC] survey: unifying the appearance in different options dialogs

[John Ralls]

> On Jul 18, 2018, at 7:24 AM, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
> 
> I didn’t realize there were so many such dialogs!
> 
> Looking them over now, I’d think setting the value to “8” would leave some room for future flexibility and this appears to be doable based on the size of most tabs. (this would vary with very long strings, perhaps considering German, it might be better to leave the max at “6”)
> 
> It looks like the Import/Export and Online Banking setup dialogs are different in that they force the user to step through each tab in order. Normally, tabs should not depend on or affect settings in other tabs. (or the dialog should be re-arranged) Since this is the case with those dialogs, it seems either they’ve been specially designed, or they are using a different gtk element to force the progression through tabs rather than let the user jump around.
> 
> I see some room for improvement here as well. Adding numerals before the label of each tab in these ‘ordered-tab-dialogs’ would make the fact that you have to go in order a bit more obvious. (I tried to jump around, and only when I couldn’t did I notice the ’Next’ button which clued me in)
> 
> Additionally, it seems the Import Bills/Invoice and the Customers/Vendors dialogs are intended to operate the same way, but simply haven’t been transitioned to the other format. (which I personally think is the better design as it forces the user to enter required information in order.)
> 
> If those last two changes aren’t something you’ll be dealing with, I’ll just file bug reports/RFE’s on them.
> 
> Thanks for your work!

Assistants (Online Banking, Imports, Stock Split, Mortgage/Loan, New File, maybe more) are special dialogs that walk the user through a process. Microsoft calls them “Wizards”, Gtk calls them assistants (long ago they called them “Gurus”). They do indeed have a separate class, GtkAssistant [1] and the tab setting shouldn’t affect them.

Wizards have been around since Windows 3 at least and the “Back” and “Next” buttons are a dead giveaway that that’s what your in. I don’t think that numbering the list of pages is going to make it more intuitive. IMO the list of pages itself is distracting and gives the impression that you can skip around in it so I’d get rid of it entirely.

Before we go overboard with the number of tabs across the top of dialogs remember that if dialogs--or any other window’s default size--get bigger than 800x600 we get complaints from people with small screens. Remember as well that some users may have large fonts set because of poor eyesight and that can have an effect on dialog width even if the tab labels are short.

Regards,
John Ralls

[1] https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkAssistant.html <https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkAssistant.html>