Unified "Preferences" App?

Development OS
41

I agree, and I think it is the general concensus in the Haiku team. Individual preferences are not going away. We are however trying to merge some of them, as ithas been done for “Input” already (vs separate Mouse, Keyboard, Touchpad, and Joystick prefs). Which is not very different from what Dano was doing, apparently.

A single app also creates more problems in terms of UX design. You have a lot of settings and you will need to put them in separate panels. If you do this by having an entry point icon view, you need to add some way to get back to that after changing some settings. So now your app needs back/forward buttons. If you do it with a tab-like system, you quickly end up with having nested levels of hierarchy (a tabview inside a tabview, or some variation of that). You also need to design ALL preferences so that they use the same window size and all fit nicely in it.

Also, there is often confusion about wether the default/revert buttons will apply only to the “local” settings (the ones shown on screen, and not any hidden part of the UI), the whole settings in the preference app, or something in-between. Or if you don’t do that, you end up re-inventing the window management. Which means you have special not-quite-windows for your preference “cards”, that can’t be stacked and tiled anymore, for example.

So, it was nice when all settings would fit in a single screen like in the early Macintosh System versions. But they gave up on the idea later on, probably for similar reasons.

5 Likes
42

apgreimann,

You captured the round rect style perfectly but that will continue to be an up hill battle.

SuperPrefs already contains a similar search feature. What remains is to load the preference application views into the window.

For myself I have never had an issue with the current one app per preference setup since I know where to look for the settings, but for newcomers to Haiku a search feature would be a good addition.

1 Like
43

That’s kind of what this would be if it was made, it’d have it’s own child windows or ‘cards’ since Haiku doesn’t offer this. Preflet cards would open inside, and be closed, switched between, etc all from inside the app, idk how the processes and what not would look like for that though but it might be possible maybe

Also there wouldn’t be back/forward buttons for this; I’d sorta hoped the thumb bar above the cards would be instantly familiar to iOS/iPadOS or Android 9+ users (it would show or hide the cards sheet to reveal/cover the ‘all settings’ view).

Far as where revert actions go, that’d be up to the smart pref a user would choose — whole system, all preflets, last preflet opened, or whatever would be added in as scripts or actions

44

Not necessarily an up hill battle… if it is optional!