Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 55426
RFE: preset a list of partitions that have not been flagged for formatting
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:37:54 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Description of problem: when installing rh7.2 I come across this dialog: -----------| Format ? |------------ You have chosen not to format a pre-existing partition which is being mounted under a system directory. Unless you have particular needs to preserve data on this partition, it is highly recommended you format this partition to guarantee the data formerly on the partition does not corrupt you new installation. Are you sure you want to do this ? No Yes ---------------------------------- at this point I was /really/ sure I do not wanted to format this partition... but I cannot make *any* sense of this dialog, it seems the title ask one thing and the final question the reverse... two problems with this dialog: too much verbose and utterly confused. now, look at the final question: "Are you sure you want to do this ?" to do what ? what the title ("Format ?") say ? or what the (extremely verbose) paragraf *seems* to imply ? so, at that point I choose to ignore the paragraf and concentrate in the title: -----------| Format ? |------------ Are you sure you want to do this ? No Yes ---------------------------------- (with my hands ready for quick ctrl-alt-del) I choose "No" and anaconda take me back at the druid app, which confuses me even more... at that point, I hit reset, and the next time I choosed the good old fdisk, and all went ok... this is proof that as usability expert, matt wilson is a great hacker 8) seriously, this just cry for a usability expert (who know NOTHING about programming) at redhat... /sergio Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Didn't try Steps to Reproduce: 1. upgrade from rh7.1 (with the fstab label bug) to 7.2 2. choose disk druid as the partition app 3. choose no at the format question Actual Results: utterly confusing, inconsistent and verbose dialog Expected Results: a clear, consistent and short dialog Additional info: I'm not a usability guy, so you may disregard this try: --------| Avoid Format ? |--------- Avoiding to format a pre-existing partition may corrupt your new installation. Are you sure you want to avoid to format the partition ? Yes No ------------------------------------ maybe this is more clear, but I'm not happy as is a double negative type of question... (something you should avoid like the plague in UI)
Agreed.
Hmm. As a technical writer and UI wonk, I'll give this a try. :) I don't think the dialog box is too wordy per-say, it just needs a clearer explanation, and the question needs to be clearer. --| Continue without formatting a partition? |------ You have chosen to use a pre-existing partition for this installation without formatting it. RedHat recommends that you format this partition to make sure files from a previous operating system installation do not cause problems with this installation of Linux. However, you should continue without formatting this partition if it contains files you need to keep such as user's home directories. Are you sure you want to continue without formatting the partition ? Yes No ---------------------------------- Ideally, it would be nice if the dialog box displayed the partition it was asking about, and be able to handle more than one partition (rather than ask multiple times). Cheers.
sergio, Yes, Matt is a great hacker. And yes, we need a usability expert. But UI experts are hard to find and expensive to employ. Sort of like Matt. ;)
melevittfl, your mastery of language is appreciated. I have updated the text in CVS based on your recommendations. I'm going to leave this bug open in case we decide to implement a list that presents all the partitions that have not been selected to format. Thanks for your report.
Changing summary field to RFE:
bfox, I'm cheap... ;) melevittfl, your suggestion is good (maybe too verbose for my taste, but good) another thing I forget to mention, is that you *always* should put buttons in the order Yes/No (never in the order No/Yes, worse if you mix orders), (the principle of least surprise) and the "recommended" button should be focused... (note that the original dialog has No/Yes order) /sergio
Deferring to future release.
Changed to 'CLOSED' state since 'RESOLVED' has been deprecated.