[Straw-devel] Re: Comments on the CVS version of Straw

[Jan Alonzo]

On Tue, 2003-08-12 at 13:52, Michael JasonSmith wrote:

Hey,

> Thank you for writing Straw.  It is an excellent program, and does its
> job very well.  After using Straw for a while I have compiled a list of
> comments.  They are not feature enhancements, but modifications to the
> UI to make the program easier to use.  They are given without malice,
> but with the hope of making Straw better.  I'd make the modifications
> myself, but I do not have the time :(

cool.


> Thank you, once again,
>     Michael JasonSmith  
> 
> 1.  Straw needs some default news feeds; maybe Straw[1], Footnotes[2],
>     and Slashdot[3].  At the moment it is hard to know where to get
>     started.  You'll find that it will also make documentation a lot
>     easier to write as you can first introduce Straw by showing how to 
>     read news-feeds rather than having to say "First select 
>     Edit->Preferences..."  This is a bit like how Web browsers start 
>     with a default list of bookmarks.

AFAIK, it has 3 default feeds namely Straw, Footnotes, and gnomedesktop.


> 2.  The text beneath the icons should follow the desktop default.
>     Don't alter the user's preference without a very good reason.

Been thinking about this, thanks for bringing it up.

> 
> 3.  "Preferences" should not be on the toolbar.  Instead the toolbar
>     should contain "Refresh", "Find", "Help" (when done) and "Quit".
>     Toolbars should contain the buttons that the user will select
>     the most, and "Preferences" will rarely be selected once Straw is
>     set up.

Right. I've got a screenshot,
http://www.spaceants.org/images/straw-offline.png. Also shows the new
gconf entries for straw.

> 4.  I have yet to figure out what the "Add New Feed" button does as it
>     never seems to work for me :(  Besides, how is it different from
>     "Pretences"?

The 'Add New Feed' lets you add a new feed into your list of
subscriptions. The difference between that with the preferences is that
in the preferences, you to tend to add the feedname and URL whereas "Add
New Feed" does all the hard work for you. It even has RSS auto
discovery, e.g. user just entered www.spaceants.org. If it finds one or
more feed for that site, It will display a list of feeds and lets the
user choose what feed he/she wants to subscribe to.

> 5.  My gut feeling is to split the "Feeds" tab from the "Preferences"
>     dialog, and have a separate "Feeds" dialog ("Edit->Feeds"), to
>     make clear where to go to modify feeds.  The "Add New Feed" button
>     can then be added to the new feeds dialog.

Been thinking about this as well. Thanks again.


> 6.  The default poling time should be greater than 30m, as Slashdot
>     (which would be one of the main sites polled by Straw, I guess)
>     blocks feeds that poll more than once every half hour.

yeah, 60 mins would be good.

> 7.  Maybe move the "Feed Information" and "Subscriptions and Blogroll"
>     menu items into their own "View" menu.

Thanks!

> 8.  "Refresh" should be disabled when the feeds are being polled.
>     That would make it make it more obvious that Straw is currently
>     polling the feeds.

Right.

> 9.  The feeds should be polled as soon as Straw starts or after
>     "polling frequency" minutes have passed.  The current the
>     behaviour to poll after a minute is confusing.

In my copy(with the gconf stuff), straw polls only after poll_freq has
passed which should be the right way of doing it. Some people might
close and then start straw again and polling as soon as straw starts is
not a very good idea IMO since it defeats the purpose of poll_frequency
in the first place.

> 10. There needs to be an icon for the "Feeds" list to show "parsing".
>     In the interim, the "Convert" icon would do :).
> 
> 11. I really like your non-blocking architecture for getting the
>     feeds, but the message bar is the wrong place to give feedback for
>     this sort of job.  When I first used Straw I thought the system
>     was polling and parsing each site in turn, rather than issuing all
>     requests at once,  so I was confused why it was jumping from
>     "Parsing Y" to "Polling X".  You give excellent feedback in the
>     "Feeds" list, so I would rely on that by maybe moving the status
>     icons to the left, so they are more obvious.  That way the message
>     bar can stick to general feedback, like "Getting Feeds", with some
>     sort of progress indication.

Probably moving the icons to the left is a good idea. 

> 12. I understand why you have the "Valid XML" indicator, but you will
>     need to drop it as more and more people use Straw (as I hope they
>     will) as it is confusing. (How many "normal" users care that a
>     document is valid XML?)  If you really do need this information,
>     put it in a dialog box accessed from the "View" menu.  You can
>     then give more information about how the feed failed the parse.

This would be a good addition [7] above.


> [1] http://www.nongnu.org/straw/news.rss
> [2] http://www.gnomedesktop.com/backend.php
> [3] http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rss

ATM, we're sort of concentrating under the hood since UI fixes will be
much easier once some stuff gets fixed. BTW, straw has a ML now, just go
to the project page for more info :) Of course, patches are always
welcome. :) Thanks a lot.


-- 
 .''`.     Jan Alonzo      jmalonzo at spaceants dot org
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