Making paper the default style?

[Dennis Brakhane]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:01 AM, Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-10-28 at 23:48 +0100, Dennis Brakhane wrote:
>> I second that. Having "menu items" that depend on what's shown outside
>> of the menu with no indication whatsoever is bad usability.
>>
>> Even I, as a mercurial user, got confused and only noticed through
>> looking at the status bar that it depends on the current changeset.
>> Now image a user that doesn't know mercurial or DVCS at all that get's
>> told to "just click zip" to download the current status as a zip. If
>> he is curious and clicks on one of the commit messages first, he will
>> download an outdated version without knowing or expecting it.
>
> An interesting point, and one I'd like to see further explored. However,
> this is not a regression from the classic style, so not an impediment to
> changing the default.

There is a slight regression. Not from the technical point of view,
but from the perception kind. In the classic style, the menu points
are located in the "header" of the page, so it is more clear that on
[1] "zip" refers to the "changeset: merge with crew", as stated in the
line below. It's not completely clear either, but in the paper style
it's worse, IMHO.

And just for the record: I also like paper much more. (But since I
dislike the classic style, I pretty much prefer any style over
classic)


[1] http://www.selenic.com/hg/index.cgi/rev/9105467b8167?style=classic