[cups.bugs] Re: [LOW] STR #1626: Web Interface checkboxes not working as advertised

Kurt Pfeifle kpfeifle at danka.de
Sun Apr 30 11:43:15 PDT 2006


[STR Closed w/o Resolution]

OK.

But this is bound to lead to major usability problems. The user should be
aware that he may loose major custom settings. Because it is precisely the
ease of use that makes it dangerous here: it can seduce him to "saw off
the knot he is sitting on", with no way back.

That way the new "ease of use" provided by the web interface to this
function makes it easy to loose a working setup, and difficult to get back
to a working one.

I suggest to at least add a warning here for now. Is it possible in 1.3 to
discover if a user changes from "non password" to "authenticated" access,
and issue a warning about this? Or if he changes from Basic to *Digest
authentication?

Also, the button naming may not be truely mirroring what is happening.
Maybe rename "Change Settings" to "Use New Config Template and Restart the
CUPS Service" ?

In general, the approach to use such templates, and apply them with a
single click seems to be the way forward. (They need to be accompanied by
appropriate explanations of course). I think this should be expanded in
CUPS-1.3 into a separate section/tab of the web GUI. 

[ Likewise for the snmp backend autodiscovery: it is *very* nice when
first seeing it integrated into the web interface. But I assume it can
become a distraction very quickly when used in an environment with dozens
or 100s of printers, since it reruns every time the /admin page is
accessed. This should be a separate link "Discover Printers in my Network
Automatically", and be run "on demand" only...  ]

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1626
Version: 1.2rc3
Fix Version: Will Not Fix (r5470)





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