User interface improvement

rekcor
Some of Zotero's UI elements are contra-intuitive:

- When adding a note, a popup appears in which you can type the note. This popup does not have a 'Save' button. In fact, the note is saved automatically when closing the window. In most Windows programs, the note would be lost, not saved.
- Quite some buttons lack tooltip information, e.g. the tiny '-' buttons to delete items.
- There is a '+' columns in my article list, but it is unclear what '+' means.
  • rekcor
    Forgot to mention: I really like Zotero, thanks a lot! :-)
  • bdarcus
    On notes, I think the current behavior is preferable (except they really need to add undo for note editing actions).
  • RintzeRintze
    - There is a '+' columns in my article list, but it is unclear what '+' means.
    Agreed. A paperclip icon instead of the "+" would be clearer.
  • rekcor
    @bdarcus: why is the current behavior preferable? I think it is good HCI practice to copy the behavior of commonly used programs. In program's like MS-Word, your document is lost when you press the 'X' button, so I expect Zotero to do the same.
  • bdarcus
    You're assuming Windows and Word as the standard of comparison. I don't accept that assumption.
  • noksagt
    why is the current behavior preferable?
    Can't answer Bruce's rationale, but I have a few:
    • it is consistent with other Zotero behavior (you don't save a modified record)
    • it is faster/easier
    • Zotero is cross-platform, so OS-specific guidelines don't necessarily have a big stake
    • other note-taking apps (tomboy on gnome, etc.) have the same behavior
    • many other firefox/web-based tools don't require you to use a separate save button
  • rekcor
    @bdarcus, noksagt:

    most computer users out there DO use Windows/Word, so if Zotero (and all other Linux programs) want to be accepted by this audience, they better copy its HCI / UI.

    P.S. I am not in favor at all of Microsoft and its products, but they are used by a large amount of potential Zotero users
  • noksagt
    Even on Windows, 'save' is usually only used for new files. A new note is not a separate file. That may be why there is no 'save' dialogue in EndNote, JabRef, bibus, and others for individual records/notes.
  • bdarcus
    most computer users out there DO use Windows/Word, so if Zotero (and all other Linux programs) want to be accepted by this audience, they better copy its HCI / UI.
    Your comment is the first I've heard about this issue, so I don't think your argument holds. There are plenty of Word and Windows users here who are quite happy with the functionality and design.

    And as noksagt says, note-taking in a bib app is not the same as document authoring in word-processor. So as I suggested earlier, I think you're comparing apples and oranges.
  • rekcor
    @noksagt:

    Based on: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-mistakes.html

    let's carefully examine what happens when I add a note

    1) I press the Add button

    2) A popup appears with a small wysiwyg editor. For me this is popup is unexpected, because e.g. when adding a Tag, no such popup pops up (Inconsistancy)

    3) This popup does not tell me anything about how I can save my note (No Perceived Affordance, No Feedback). I accidentally found out the note is saved on the background, because I see something happening on Zotero's 'Notes' tab. At least some feedback 'Saving note' on the popup would improve things. But I would opt for a small 'Save note and quit' button on the button of the popup. When the user closes the window without saving, he is prompted e.g. 'Unsaved note, do you want to close this window?'.

    4) When I decide NOT to add a comment after I typed something, the Note is saved as 'Untitled Note'. This is also unexpected behavior: there is no note, so there isn't an untitled one either. I never asked Zotero to save my note, so I do not expect Zotero to save something which is not there.

    5) To delete a note, I must click on a '-' which, once discovered with a magnifying class, does not look like a clickable region nor a button (Non-standard GUI controls). The cursor also does not change to a pointing finger, the default when hovering a link on a webpage.

    @bdarcus: The case you do not hear a complains from Windows users, does not mean there are no complains. Most users are not used to put their complaints on a forum like this. Because I am a HCI designer myself, and because I like Zotero, I take the effort.
  • dstillman
    All data in Zotero is saved automatically, notes included. That's the primary standard being applied here, and violating that would seem to be a much bigger problem. And as noksagt and bdarcus said, there's plenty of precedent for auto-saving in note-taking apps. I'd argue the better ones do. (This isn't limited to note-taking apps, either. Example: the entire iPhone interface.) The argument that it's preferable behavior for data to be "lost when you press the 'X' button" (or when Firefox crashes before the note was saved) seems like a strange one to make. This is not a feature of Windows apps that needs to be copied.
    5) To delete a note, I must click on a '-' which, once discovered with a magnifying class, does not look like a clickable region nor a button (Non-standard GUI controls).
    I agree that the minus button is a bit hard to see, though it is consistent with author editing in the metadata pane (which many users will be exposed to first) and has a background effect on hover (the same one used in the metadata pane) that gives a pretty good indication that it will respond to a click. But it should be more visible. Also, yes, there should be a tooltip.

    However, you can also delete notes by expanding the parent item in the middle pane, selecting the note, and hitting Delete/Backspace, which is standard behavior. Really, the Notes and Attachments panes are redundant and will likely be removed, which would address a number of your concerns.
    The cursor also does not change to a pointing finger, the default when hovering a link on a webpage.
    Zotero isn't a web page. The cursor doesn't change to a pointing finger when hovering over application UI elements.
  • rekcor
    edited July 17, 2009
    @Dan:
    there's plenty of precedent for auto-saving in note-taking apps.
    Ok. I am not interested in other note-taking apps, because I am using Zotero, not the other ones :-).

    But I will not stubbornly stick to 'Save' buttons: a clearly visible remark like 'Autosaving note...' or a blinking disk icon would do as well.
    he argument that it's preferable behavior for data to be "lost when you press the 'X' button" (or when Firefox crashes before the note was saved) seems like a strange one to make.
    Of course I do not want to let Zotero delete unsaved notes, what I want is that Zotero does not show unexpected behavior, or when it does Zotero informs me when its doing things on the background for me. Word also autosaves documents, but it shows me it does.
    Zotero isn't a web page. The cursor doesn't change to a pointing finger when hovering over application UI elements.
    But it is running in a web browser, so I expect it to act like a webpage. Besides that, I do not see the point of not informing the user when an element is clickable. Can you give me good arguments for that? Changing the cursor's appearance is a very nice and subtle way of doing this and well known to people surfing the web.

    The fact that Zotero's does not inform me in other occasions is an argument to change Zotero's behavior there as well.
  • dstillman
    I am not interested in other note-taking apps, because I am using Zotero, not the other ones :-).
    OK, well, your initial argument was that Zotero shouldn't auto-save because "most Windows applications" don't...
    But I will not stubbornly stick to 'Save' buttons: a clearly visible remark like 'Autosaving note...' or a blinking disk icon would do as well.
    I really don't see this as a big issue. You can see the note appear in the Zotero window. You noticed it. There's no downside to not noticing it, because if you close the window—perhaps expecting a warning, even—your data is still there. As soon as you realize it's auto-saving, you never need to think about it again, which, I would say, is how software should work. Zotero automatically saves note data as soon as you stop typing, so an indicator would get annoying pretty quickly.

    But again, we'll likely be removing the Notes and Attachments tabs, and both the Note button in the Zotero toolbar and the context menu option create an empty note directly in the Zotero pane, so the only way to get a popup window will be to Shift-click the Note icon or click "Edit in a separate window", by which point you'll likely have figured out that Zotero saves all data automatically.
    But it is running in a web browser, so I expect it to act like a webpage.
    Then you will be disappointed by the entire rest of the Firefox interface and every other Firefox extension.
    Besides that, I do not see the point of not informing the user when an element is clickable.
    Hover effects are fine, and Zotero uses a consistent hover effect to indicate when plain text is clickable. But if you are an HCI designer, you're surely aware that applications almost never use the hand pointer cursor for anything other than hyperlinks. Zotero is an application, not a web page, and these elements are not hyperlinks.
  • rekcor
    OK, well, your initial argument was that Zotero shouldn't auto-save because "most Windows applications" don't..
    This is because there are multiple 'good practices', one being 'try to copy the look-and-feel of abundantly used programs, the others being 'inform the user', 'prevent unexpected behavior', etc. These can be conflicting of course.

    One behavior spread all over the Windows platform is: the program saves data when the user tells him to do it. Of course there are autosave and autorecover functions, but these are expections to the rule (good exceptions by the way).

    If Zotero's developers have good arguments not to copy the look-n-feel of these programs, they are of course free to do so :-). But I think huge companies like Microsoft and Google have done more research on human-computer interaction of their product than people in an average open source project.
    Zotero is an application, not a web page, and these elements are not hyperlinks.
    This is also a matter of taste of course. I expect Zotero to act like a web application because I run it in my web browser. The same counts for other plugins. But maybe I am a bit obsessed with web applications, because those are the ones I design :-).

    If Zotero is not to be treated as a web application, I expect Zotero to have the same look-n-feel as Firefox itself. Imho, it does not.

    P.S. You were of course right about the hyperlinks/pointer cursor issue. Although I used the word 'link' in my comment, I did not think it over enough. The point I wanted to make is that the '-' button does not look like a button to the user, and the hover effect is not clear to me (e.g. in the Info-->Author field, hovering a name will yield the same effect, but clicking there means: change the contents of this field; clicking '-' will not change the contents of the '-' button, but will delete the whole author)
  • sean
    edited July 17, 2009
    This thread is going nowhere, and I'm not going to let it occupy any more of our development team's time. Rekcor, your suggestion has been duly noted, and if we receive other similar requests, we'll look into it. Otherwise, there is no way that we would make such a fundamental –- and in my opinion, backward –- change to the user experience. You may regard Zotero as an "average open source project" but we have millions of users other than yourself to consider, too.

    Please feel free to start a new thread if you have other questions or suggestions.
This discussion has been closed.