Usability Issues

Hi all, dolphin developers and costumers.

Premises

• I have installed and used dolphin 7 till beta 2, now Im running 7.0.
• I'm lucky (or maybe not.. ;-) to be able to see how a novice in computer use a site based on dolphin 7
  
• As a whole site can be, IMHO the use of each function must be easily understandable
• I'm sure that few precautions can improve the user experience

Issues

1) Status message (bottom left)

Users can insert, change or clear their status message by clicking on " positioned in the bar, but after changing there is no OK button,

they can:

• press enter, nothing heppens
• press - icon,  now message is updatet but wait, (-) icon remind in minimize, not save message
• click on empty screen, nothing happens again

There should be a OK button, and by pressing (-) icon users should minimize without changing nothing, like it is done in chat module.

2) edit profile

When editing a profile there are 2 save buttons, one is for privacy, one is for personal info,

there should be only one save button that work fot both thing (info and privacy) becouse lets assume one user change infos, than change privacy and click save on privacy, hes gonna lost edits on info

3) Avoid login to not confirmed users

New members are capable to log in before they click on the confirmation link in email, but they can do nothing.

The bad thing about this is that they are automatically logged, and think they have full access. - trust me, its very confusing

Possible Solutions:

• Avoid login for them! (best solution)
  
• No auto login after join (at this point ther are not even gonna try to login befor click on email, like it is standard in other sites, but 1) is still better)
• Display a box saying -click on confirmation email to get full access- in every page (not good solution but better then nothing)

see topics:

• http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/topic/Join-Now-confirmation-Email.htm
• http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/topic/avoid-login-of-not-confirmed-users.htm

4) Module spy

When clicking on 3 possibile links (all activities - content - profiles) content should be changed trought ajax, without reloading entire page

5) Chat module (simple messanger)

when chatting, for every post, time and username are displayed in 1 line and conversation in second line, thats using too much space:

___________________________

>Now

username1         date time

text here

>Maybe better

username1: text here  time

___________________________

IMHO there is no need for date (just time), and as text of chat is usally short, this would use only 1 line

Also, i would make the chat box a bit higher

6) News module

Now the snippet of the news in home page is brutally cutted at some point, it would be great to let end the word and put a more link (see example)

___________________________

>Now

Hi all, this is my fi

>Better

Hi all, this is my first (more...)

___________________________

7) Popup on Users

Time to make the popup apper when passing over the icon of a user should be reduced (by default) to a half of the actual time. Its hard for users to discover this function (where can i change this manaully?)

Conclusion

I wrote this text after watching common users use  the site. Please let me know what you guys think about that.

Thanks for reading and sorry for my bad english.