RoGuE_StreaK
Group: Members
Posts: 418
Joined: Jan. 2004 |
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Posted: Jan. 27 2005,07:12 |
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I got my girlfriend's mum, who's fairly computer illiterate, to try DSL today, just to how she used it and see if she could get the hang of basic use, and thought of the following;
How about, if booted from LiveCD, a system that checks the home/dsl directory for new additions on shutdown, and asks the user if they want to save these files to another medium, such as floppy, harddrive, or USB. Then automatically mounts the selected device and saves the files, with some sort of marker (a filelist type thing) for later reference.
And on boot, there is a prompt asking if there are any previously saved files they would like to restore, mount the device, find the filelist thing, and restore the files.
The reasoning behind this is that most novice users will just save their files to the first dir that pops up, namely home/dsl, just as they would save to "My Documents" in windoze. So if there was a simple and unobtrusive prompt at boot and shutdown to restore or save these files, the novice user wouldn't really have to know about mounting, or backup systems, or anything like that.
And I figure half of the coding is already there for the backup system, shouldn't be too hard to implement?
Thoughts?
PS. Another few thoughts based on said observation - maybe the main apps on the desktop etc should be labeled with their corresponding function, eg "Internet - Firefox" or just plain "Internet", things like "Notepad", "Spreadsheet", "Music", etc. - 'cause unless you've used the application before, the name has no meaning to you whatsoever. Even in the menu, when you go to "Apps/Net", there is a list of apps with no description - novices don't know what's what, and especially as Firefox is about halfway down the list, it isn't obvious that it is a browser.
PPS. Just thinking from the viewpoint of complete novices, like kids etc. I know DSL isn't entirely aimed at this "market", but there does appear to be some interest in that area.
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