calum, thanks a lot for your comments and your time you have put into writing this email. as we already have opened a bug for UI, usability and HIG on gnome bugzilla, is it ok for you to continue the discussion there? http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509179 thanks! daniel On Di, 2008-01-29 at 13:37 +0000, Calum Benson wrote: > On 4 Jan 2008, at 21:30, daniel g. siegel wrote: > > > dear all, > > > > while the ui of cheese gets described as quite good by some and as > > pretty bad by others, i would like to discuss the ui and usability of > > cheese and even enhance it to be full HIG compatible. i am not a > > usability expert and the ui of cheese was done step by step without > > even > > thinking about people with handicaps or other usability features. > > therefore it would be very nice if some of you could post their > > opinion > > about cheese and what we could do better. > > I'm looking at v2.21.5 here. Unfortunately I don't have a camera I > can attach, so I'm making some guesses about what the 'real' > experience would be, and possibly missing out some important stuff. > > Initial impressions: > > - It looks weird to have the buttons in the 'middle' of the window, > with (initially) a big empty white area at the bottom-- it looked like > the window hadn't drawn properly. (I know Photo Booth does this too, > but it uses clever shading to make the photo bin look like a 'tray'-- > not something I'd recommend you do, unless you can make it work in a > theme-compliant way.) I'd suggest either moving the buttons to the > bottom of the window, below the photo bin, or putting the photos in a > sidebar rather than along the bottom. > > - Scrollbars: if keeping the photo bin rather than moving it to a > sidebar, you shouldn't show the horizontal scrollbar unless it's > actually required. > > - I don't think this application needs a menu bar. Main application > windows should generally have either a menu bar or dialog-style > buttons, but not both. And you can already do everything except open > the online help without the menu bar. (You could add another button > for Help, on the far left-- same placement as dialogs.) > > - Since the 'affirmative' button is "Take a Photo" (or "Start > Recording"), this should probably be the button furthest to the > right. Also, its label shouldn't be in bold text. > > - Photos: I should be able to multiple-select existing photos using > the standard keyboard and mouse shortcuts, and perform the same > actions on the selection as I can on a single photo. > > - Opening photos: Perhaps an "Open With" menu item would be more > useful than just "Open"? > > - Effects: IMHO it would be better if these were presented in a > sidebar or a floating palette, which could be shown or hidden by > clicking the button. That way I could see a live preview as I was > selecting my effects. You'd probably want to make the preview icons > much smaller if you did this, so you could see the full list without > having to make the window much larger. > > - Taking a photo: I'm guessing the red background and white font > colours in the countdown are hard coded, rather than taken from the > current gtk theme? IIRC gtk now supports extra theme colours like > 'critical' and 'warning'... so I'm guessing you should maybe be using > something like the 'critical' colour for the background here, with a > contrasting theme colour for the font. > > - Countdown: the font and font size also seem to be hard coded; again, > they should both be taken from the theme. > > - Move to Trash: no confirmation alert is required for this action; > it's easy enough to "undo" (by manually recovering the photos from the > trash). > > Accessibility: main concerns here are the colours and fonts that > aren't taken from the theme (as I mentioned already), and the non- > standard way of showing focus on the photo thumbnails and selected > effects. If you move the effects to a sidebar you could just use a > standard list control, so you'd get the focus effect for free. For > the photos, it would be better to draw a focus indicator around the > photo rather than tinting it-- the gtk theme provides you with the > required thickness and colour of focus indicators. Ideally, the > effect icons should all be themeable as well, although I wouldn't > expect many themes to override them. > > Very quick mockup attached of what all this might look like (have put > the effects in a sidebar rather than a palette, for the sake of > argument...) > > Cheeri, > Calum. > > -- this mail was sent using 100% recycled electrons ================================================ daniel g. siegel <dgsiegel gmail com> http://home.cs.tum.edu/~siegel gnupg key id: 0x6EEC9E62 fingerprint: DE5B 1F64 9034 1FB6 E120 DE10 268D AFD5 6EEC 9E62 encrypted email preferred
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