Bug #28813 UI for setting options is confusing and poorly documented in Mac version
Submitted: 31 May 2007 17:50 Modified: 26 May 2009 11:55
Reporter: Rob Lewis (Candidate Quality Contributor) Email Updates:
Status: Unsupported Impact on me:
None 
Category:MySQL Administrator Severity:S2 (Serious)
Version:1.2.12 OS:MacOS (10.4.9)
Assigned to: CPU Architecture:Any
Tags: documentation, Options, qc, UI

[31 May 2007 17:50] Rob Lewis
Description:
The "Options" pane of Administrator has several settings with fields for entering values. Next to each field is a pencil icon with a red slash through it. Normally (at least in the Mac world), this means "read-only, not editable". In Administrator it appears to mean "use default" (and the tooltip says "Indicates whether the option should be written to the configuration file"). 

Using a pencil with a slash to mean "don't write to config file" is extremely confusing and contrary to my entire experience. How about a simple checkbox to indicate that the option is active? Uncheck it to use the default. In fact, it would be nice if the actual default value were displayed. 

I submit that Mac users don't want to know about "configuration files". They simply want to know whether the option is active or not. 

How to repeat:
Try setting an option in the Options pane. 

Suggested fix:
Replace pencil icons with checkboxes. When box is unchecked, display default option in use. Improve documentation.
[31 May 2007 19:47] Sveta Smirnova
Thank you for the report.

Verified as described.

Should be documentation bug though, especcially because checkboxes for similar behaviour are confusing too.
[1 Jun 2007 14:08] Rob Lewis
I looked at the latest Windows version of Administrator and noticed that the option setting UI uses...checkboxes!
[26 May 2009 11:55] Susanne Ebrecht
Many thanks for writing a bug report. We are on the way to implement full functionality of MySQL Administrator into MySQL Workbench. Unfortunately you are using an unsupported platform. More informations about supported platforms you will find here:

http://www.mysql.com/support/supportedplatforms/tools.html

More informations about MySQL Workbench you will find here:

http://dev.mysql.com/workbench/