Re: One click installer a bit bare?

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:
>
>>> If we were worried about such clutter, we could enable/disable
>>> depending upon the system type you connect to - so if you connect to
>>> Greenplum it offers you Greenplum help etc, but if you don't it skips
>>> that menu option.
>>
>> pgAdmin can connect to multiple database servers at once. Further to
>> that, one of the basic design rule of GUI applications is that you
>> don't show and hide menu options on the main menus because it confuses
>> users (that is only done on the "real" context sensitive menus, which
>> are accessible elsewhere, in predictable places).
>
> pgAdmin's behaviour is already context sensitive. This would be the same.

Yes, but it doesn't hide out of context options on the main menus, it
makes them inactive. That's intentional, as we don't want to the user
to be confused by menus that change shape, or have variable numbers of
options shown.

>>> I have zero interest in putting options on the menus
>>> of pgadmin when used with other products, only in making sure people
>>> that use open source PostgreSQL get access to the open source
>>> PostgreSQL web site. Call it context-sensitive menus. That would
>>> reduce menu clutter by 2 items - in all cases.
>>
>> Just because you have zero interest in it, it doesn't mean that the
>> pgAdmin developers or other users have zero interest in it. The
>> project has always taken pride in supporting forks of Postgres.
>
> You misunderstand. I have no interest in showing an EDB or Greenplum
> user an option to reach the PostgreSQL web site. What private
> companies do is their own affair, not mine.
>
> My interest is in having a PostgreSQL user have access to the
> PostgreSQL website and announce list. That can be put on the
> PostgreSQL installer or pgadmin (when included with the PostgreSQL
> distribution at least). I don't mind which, but it needs to be in at
> least one of those places.

Aside from my other objections, PR (in that sense at least) is really
not the job of pgAdmin. It is there to help you manage your databases,
not to get you subscribed to an announcement mailing list. I'm sure if
you tried to get a similar feature added to psql you would meet with
similar resistance to the idea.

> pgAdmin was only suggested because you said putting it on the
> installer was somehow a problem.

Putting 2 such options on the installer is a potentially problem
because it clutters the UI which we know causes users to ignore things
or misread them. Keeping installers simple and to the point is a key
part of the user experience - that was one of the reasons the old
installers we such a nightmare for people to use; there was
approaching 100 config options to choose from when you ran them!

Putting one option there will, I am certain, be fine from a "not
destroying the UX perspective" - and we're looking at how best to do
that at the moment. Additionally, the installer *is* an appropriate
place for either of the links suggested - visiting the products
website, or subscribing to the products announce mailing list is a
perfectly reasonable thing to do post-installation.

I'm happy to try to put two links on the final page and see how it
looks, but I don't think it'll work well - and assuming it doesn't,
we'll need to figure out whether to link to the -announce subscription
page, or the homepage.

--
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
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