LGM single window interface

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Revision as of 10:55, 22 April 2007 by Kamila (talk)
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go back to LGM issues

Row notes that concern the issue more or less.

Icons in the Toolbox

  1. it is not easy (=quick) to recognise and identify each icon
  2. should have strong contours, be good metaphors, differentiated by colours
  3. pen and pencil have almost the same angle and colour, at least the colour should be different
  4. better icons which depict the actual effect, are needed for Dodge/burn tool and Eraser
  5. Levels, Curves, Threshold are represented by an icon of their dialog window, not the its meaning & function
  6. all the transformation tools look the same, the colour and blobby shape is the same, just the tiny details differ and show the function
  7. Ink tool would be better represented by an icon of a nib, which is the essence of the tool;
  8. Crop/resize icon is not enough differentiated from the background, and it’s difficult to know what it is; traditional two 'L's (like still used on mouse cursor) is better
  9. Measure icon tool is too complicated, too many details; old one was better (look at www.docs.gimp.org )

tool tips

  1. Initial time-out for the tool tip should be twice as long. So that the tool tip would not show up when you know what you’re doing. Probable the tool tips should come after 2 sec.
  2. There should be tool tips for all the tool parameters.

Icons

all transformation icons are almost indistinguishable.

Image window issues

  1. When closing last image window, GIMP should not quit, an 'empty' image window (grey, or with with Wilber, or tooltip) could keep the instance alive.
  2. When minimizing image window also toolbox window(s) should be minimized. (however that might be disturbing when working on many images at the same time and shifting between them)
  3. In a task bar user should see just the image windows.
  4. Maybe we could dock dialogs in the main image window. User would be able to have separate dialogs all around, or all in image window.
  5. In View/Dialogs menu user could chose the view mode. We should decide about the default after evaluating a mockup of the all-in-one concept.
  6. Inspector (toolbox) windows are at the moment real windows, and in general they are too 'fat' comparedd to the image window. for an optimal working environment they should have more ‘lightweight’ look, trimmer, more ‘athletic’. We need to limit those big push buttons that are common.

Toolbox

There should be Toolbox categories, a bit of separation would improve the ease of use (speed) of the toolbox. Even 3px between groups of tools would help. No collapsing of groups or labelling. Also in some of the menus we need to introduce more separation lines to speed up the use of them.

There are too many options docked in

  1. We need to make assessment what shall be permanently displayed.
  2. What tools will be on a heads-up display, and where would we place that?
  3. Afterwards there is going to be more place for the view of a whole picture.
  4. Things will need to be smaller, we need to think about placing GEGL history, layer, FG/BG color together with user palette, then there is space on the left side: toolbox and tool options.