deja-dup-hackers team mailing list archive

[Urban Škudnik <urban.skudnik@xxxxxxxxx>]

As discussed with Michael I will now address another aspect of  
accessing backups - partial restore [0].

Mockup:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1493539/part-rest-3.jpg

Since I only have rather low quality camera at hand I will add some  
notes to mockups.

I read through the comments of bug and tried to address (besides  
making restoring really easy) also comment #4 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+bug/306982/comments/4 
) of user feeling lost in the assistant. To address this I had added  
at the top of assistant progress bar which would mark current step in  
the assistant and would have superimposed text over it that would go  
along the lines of: "Next: Confirm the files you want to restore".  
Ideally I would like to add a widget that would mark progress in the  
assistant with bars at crucial steps and text next to them (something  
similar to what flickr currently has to present users with new layout  
(seen at any flickr photo, http://www.flickr.com/photos/marfis75/3070706780/) 
, but such a widget could take a lot of space

Another solution to this would be to change the text of forward button  
from "Forward" to "Forward/Next: Confirm your files!".

Progress bar's advantage is that it is more graphical solution and  
communicates to the user how far he still has to go before he starts  
restoring but it also takes some space and can be considered a bit of  
an overkill since our assistant is rather short (but not _that_ short:  
possible notification with introduction - select files - select where  
to restore - confirm files and location - actual restore - summary).

Under the progress bar the real interface begins.

On the left:
	First we have a ComboBox[1] with default option of showing all files  
that are in backup and with additional options of showing versions for  
a week ago, a month ago and three months ago and additional option of  
calender (with marked dates of backups if they are not daily).

	Under time option we have user-defined bookmarks to notable  
directories (Documents, Downloads, etc.) with possible addition of  
search box at the bottom (not drawn on my mockups!)

On the right:
	First there are breadcrumbs. (see below)

	Under breadcrumbs an IconView lists all available files in selected  
directory.

As for breadcrumbs... they are a bit tricky. It appears that Gnome  
currently does not have a widget for breadcrumbs and Nautilus  
apparently uses a custom widget. That said, the breadcrumbs are in  
development and I think it would not be good for us to start re- 
implementing our own version.

Looking at [2], Nautilus Elementary use case would offer some awesome  
usability for our users. I will try to talk to the developer that  
worked on this widget and see how far it is and possibly give a hand  
with it (with general

Providing that breadcrumbs do not become a viable option in near  
future another possible option would be to use an input box that would  
show the path name where user is currently located and possibly offer  
search capabilities (if user just starts typing (if he starts typing  
with "/" or "~/" we should of course recognize this and start  
accepting path instead of search term).

Opinions, ideas, suggestions warmly welcomed ;)

Regards,
Urban

[0] https://bugs.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+bug/306982
[1] http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/unstable/GtkComboBox.html
[2] http://live.gnome.org/Design/Breadcrumb/PriorArt