remote-help-assistant team mailing list archive

[Andrew Sayers <andrew-bugs.launchpad.net@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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There were four reasons for the change:

In 0.1, pages 3 and 4 were designed on the premise that you would think
about how to connect, then make your choice, then connect.  In 0.2, I
started thinking that users would be more likely to just push buttons
until they found something that worked.  I thought that putting the
"connect" button on the same page as the options would encourage that
sort of experimentation.

Also to make pushing buttons easier, there's no "reverse connection"
mode in 0.2.  Instead, the assistant will always listen for a
connection, and will try to make an outgoing connections as well if an
address is provided.  I think it's important that the "Forward" button
on page 3 start off inactive for sharers, so they don't accidentally
click through to the next page, then get confused.  In 0.1, that was
achieved by requiring them to type in an address or click "reverse
connection".  I suppose we could get the same effect by providing a "no
outgoing connection" option in the advanced section, or a "(no outgoing
connection)" element in the dropdown list.

In 0.1, clicking on the "manage the firewall" checkbox immediately
caused the firewall to be managed, which meant that a mis-click could
lock the whole system up while you were forced to type in your password.
~ I think that tying firewall management to a "connect" button on the
same page as the "firewall" checkbox should be more intuitive for users.
~ Now I think about it though, you could get just as intuitive a result
by having the progress bar say "Setting up firewalls..." or something
similar.

Finally, the "forced simplicity" mode we talked about before could be
implemented as a separate program with just that one page.  So you start
the program, click connect, and you're sharing.  Then you close the
window, and you're disconnected.  Of course, there's no technical reason
why the two programs would have to have similar interfaces, but my
instinct is to keep interfaces the same if possible, to reduce confusion.

I do take the point that this interrupts the step-by-step process - what
do you think about the above issues?

	- Andrew
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