[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#6339) gtk2.0 client / 1.14.1beta: please re-add the 'buy' button on the overview screen

["Benoit Hudson" <bh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 06:21:34AM -0700, Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa wrote:
> According to the GNOME HIG you should not have duplicated functionality
> across the tabs of the same window. Originally I even removed the progress
> bar from the city dialog overview pane.

This is clearly bad design from the user perspective.  Common functions
should be easily accessible wherever they make sense, which must be
balanced against overwhelming the user and making it impossible to find
anything.  The goal of a UI should be that the user has an easy time
doing what he needs to do.  The goal should not be to minimize code.

The ancient Microprose Civ2 dialog was a great UI (maybe Civ1 was too,
but I don't remember): you could do everything in one window, and it was
pretty obvious.  The old gtk client was great in that it allowed you all
of that, plus there were tabs to do more specialized stuff: worklists
and CMAs -- it would be bad to merge those into the main city dialog
because it would just be too much on one screen.  Since the old dialog
worked so well, I question the wisdom of "fixing" this dialog too much.

That said, the new client is far prettier than the old, and some things
are nicer in it (I think I've been won over by the diplomacy screen
finally, accepting that keyboard shortcuts are sort of like using
settlers).  And I like dragging worklist items around the worklist,
although clicking the 'up' button wasn't a big chore before.