Tag Archives: Data Sources

Linux

Where does the Navigator leads you?

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We show on the example of the Navigator and two other functions that toolbars should not be toggled on and off by a button in the main toolbar.

Seldom used functions: Data sources, Gallery, Navigator

A toolbar (here we refer to the primary, standard toolbar) is an UI element primarily designed for fast access to frequently used functions. But often it is diverted from its intended use and serves for presentation of special actions. It’s a great challenge for designers to develop an icon that fits those seldom used and probably less known functions.

Actually, theNavigator implemented in LibreOffice doesn’t provide some kind of help function as it might be understood by new users, but it shows or hides a side bar, where you can quickly jump to different parts of the document. The icon consists of an abstract star or, metaphorically, a compass rose.

Another seldom used function is Gallery. This function again toggles a toolbar which allows to select pictures, wallpapers, or tones and insert them into the current document. The icon is made of a folder with a small bitmap or some kind of abstract symbol respectively. And Data Sources provides functions to connect, browse, and interact withdatabase tables. The icon looks like a bar chart within a document in Tango and some kind of form in Oxygen.

Results

The icon test reveals that users hardly associate the function with the correct icon (cf. Methodology of Testing Icons). The worst value of the whole icon test is found with 4.4 for Data Sources in Oxygen. As a rule of thumb a value below 9 is questionable.

Table 1: Results of icon test.

Term Tango Oxygen
Navigator 7.6 8.4
Gallery 9.6 7.6
Data Sources 7.8 4.4

Ambiguous metaphors lead the users to associate icons with unintended functions. Thus, the term ‘navigator’ is associated with the hyperlink icon (18% mix-up in Tango). Yet 60% of the participants failed to associate Data Sources with the correct icon in Oxygen. With 15% the icon is used for Navigator and 18% mismatch the Table icon to the function. The Gallery icon is used for ‘Document as E-Mail‘ in Oxygen with 24%. Only the Tango Icon for Gallery is working fine.

Conclusion

Whereas application’s whole functionality (that does not exclusively rely on context) is located in the main menu, the intention of the toolbar is fast access to frequently used functions. Developers must not abuse it for presentation of special actions. Neither ‘exit’ or ‘help’ nor functions to configure the interface in terms of switching other toolbars on /off are frequently used functions and must not be added to the standard toolbar. If it is necessary to direct users to special actions or to advice a feature one should consider …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

Linux

Where does the Navigator lead you?

Leave a comment

We show on the example of the Navigator and two other functions that toolbars should not be toggled on and off by a button in the main toolbar.

Seldom used functions: Data sources, Gallery, Navigator

A toolbar (here we refer to the primary, standard toolbar) is an UI element primarily designed for fast access to frequently used functions. But often it is diverted from its intended use and serves for presentation of special actions. It’s a great challenge for designers to develop an icon that fits those seldom used and probably less known functions.

Actually, theNavigator implemented in LibreOffice doesn’t provide some kind of help function as it might be understood by new users, but it shows or hides a side bar, where you can quickly jump to different parts of the document. The icon consists of an abstract star or, metaphorically, a compass rose.

Another seldom used function is Gallery. This function again toggles a toolbar which allows to select pictures, wallpapers, or tones and insert them into the current document. The icon is made of a folder with a small bitmap or some kind of abstract symbol respectively. And Data Sources provides functions to connect, browse, and interact withdatabase tables. The icon looks like a bar chart within a document in Tango and some kind of form in Oxygen.

Results

The icon test reveals that users hardly associate the function with the correct icon (cf. Methodology of Testing Icons). The worst value of the whole icon test is found with 4.4 for Data Sources in Oxygen. As a rule of thumb a value below 9 is questionable.

Table 1: Results of icon test.

Term Tango Oxygen
Navigator 7.6 8.4
Gallery 9.6 7.6
Data Sources 7.8 4.4

Ambiguous metaphors lead the users to associate icons with unintended functions. Thus, the term ‘navigator’ is associated with the hyperlink icon (18% mix-up in Tango). Yet 60% of the participants failed to associate Data Sources with the correct icon in Oxygen. With 15% the icon is used for Navigator and 18% mismatch the Table icon to the function. The Gallery icon is used for ‘Document as E-Mail‘ in Oxygen with 24%. Only the Tango Icon for Gallery is working fine.

Conclusion

Whereas application’s whole functionality (that does not exclusively rely on context) is located in the main menu, the intention of the toolbar is fast access to frequently used functions. Developers must not abuse it for presentation of special actions. Neither ‘exit’ or ‘help’ nor functions to configure the interface in terms of switching other toolbars on /off are frequently used functions and must not be added to the standard toolbar. If it is necessary to direct users to special actions or to advice a feature one should consider …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

Linux

Scott Moser: Using Ubuntu cloud-images without a cloud

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Since sometime in early 2009, we’ve put effort into building the Ubuntu cloud images and making them useful as “cloud images”. From the beginning, they supported use as an instance on a cloud platform. Initially that was limited to EC2 and Eucalyptus, but over time, we’ve extended the “Data Sources” that the images support.

A “Data Source” to cloud-init provides 2 essential bits of information that turn a generic cloud-image into a cloud instance that is actually usable to its creator. Those are:

  • public ssh key
  • user-data

Without these, the cloud image cannot even be logged into.

Very early on it felt like we should have a way to use these images outside of a cloud. They were essentially ready-to-use installations of Ubuntu Server that allow you to bypass installation. In 11.04 we added the OVF as a data source and a tool in cloud-init’s source tree for creating a OVF ISO Transport that cloud-init would read data from. It wasn’t until 12.04 that we improved the “NoCloud” data source to make this even easier.

Available in cloud-utils, and packaged in Ubuntu 12.10 is a utility named ‘cloud-localds’. This makes it trivial to create a “local datasource” that the cloud-images will then use to get the ssh key and/or user-data described above.

After boot, you should see a login prompt that you can log into with ‘ubuntu’ and ‘passw0rd‘ as specified by the user-data provided.

Some notes about the above:

  •  None of the commands other than ‘apt-get install’ require root.
  •  The 2 qemu-img commands are not strictly necessary. 
  • The ‘convert’ converts the compressed qcow2 disk image as downloaded to an uncompressed version.  If you don’t do this the image will still boot, but reads will go decompression.
  • The ‘create’ creates a new qcow2 delta image backed by ‘disk1.img.orig’. It is not necessary, but useful to keep the ‘.orig’ file pristine. All writes in the kvm instance will go to the disk.img file.
  • libvirt, different kvm networking or disk could have been used. The kvm command above is just the simplest for demonstration. (I’m a big fan of the ‘-curses’ option to kvm.)
  • In the kvm command above, you’ll need to hit ‘ctrl-alt-3’ to see kernel boot messages and boot progress. That is because the cloud images by default send console output to the first serial device, that a cloud provider is likely to log.
  • There is no default password in the Ubuntu images. The password was set by the user-data provided.

    • The content of ‘my-user-data’ can actually be anything that cloud-init supports as user-data.  So any custom user-data you have can be used (or developed) in this way.

      …read more
      Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu