Re: Re-inventing Metatheme

[snickell stanford edu]

I have mockups for this stuff I did a few months ago, I'll dig them out
when I get home tonight (if I remember, ugh, sticking a post-it note to
my doorway ;-).

1) It would be good to integrate "editing" with the general theme
selection feature rather than treating themes as some big complicated
thing you need a seperate editor for. This makes theme "sets" (I like
this term, its good because it gently exposes the idea that these are
composed of sub-themes without bludgening the user with the concept).
I'm not sure we need the idea of "customized" themes so much. I would
propose that rather than adding the complicated of save, etc, we just
make changes happen. Having revert there to revert to the theme's old
behavior seems fine.

2) Should provide a way to open the user's themes folder for copying new
themes in. Themes should also be readable directly from tarballs so the
user doesn't have to worry about unzipping them etc. Drop and go is a
nice ideal here.

3) I can't put my finger on it, but the current layout proposed there
looks rather messy. Its heavy on frames, and low on alignment :-)

4) Metacity and GTK themes both change very quickly (plenty fast enough
for instant apply). Nautilus themes should, though I haven't checked
recently.

5) I was just going to propose the list with small versions of the
previews when I reread your message and noticed it was there ;-) Its
always nice to provide information to the user as early as possible
rather than making them select things to "find out". I think this isa 
good idea.

6) It would be nice to have a way to export theme sets in a single
package that includes all the sub-themes (and not just referenecs to
them), so people can easily share them.

-Seth

Quoting Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>:

> > From: Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>
> > To: Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>
> > Cc: desktop-devel-list gnome org
> > Organization: Ximian.
> > Date: 27 Aug 2002 15:14:41 +0100
> > 
> > Hi Bill,
> > 
> > On Tue, 2002-08-27 at 12:41, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > > Since the accessibility team has some requirements around
> Metatheme,
> > 
> > 	It would be good to codify them all in a GEP - so it's all
> beautifuly
> > archived for later, and no-one can miss out on the chance to
> comment
> > fully on it all.
> > 
> > 	Rodney / Bill how about it ? cvs module 'gep'
> > 
> > 	Regards,
> > 
> > 		Michael.
> 
> In the meantime, here are two screen shots for a Metatheme mockup,
> which
> Calum and I worked up today.
> 
> Two states are shown; the first state shows the metathemer when an
> un-customized theme is in use, the second shows the state if the
> current
> metatheme (a.k.a. "Theme Set") has been user-customized via other
> preferences dialogs, i.e. if the gconf keys in current use do not
> match
> the current metatheme exactly.  
> 
> Some comments:
> 
> 1) The "customized set" checkbox serves as a read-only boolean
> indicator, alternatively we can use the phrase "(custom)" after the
> Theme-Set name shown in the drop-down listbox.
> 
> 2) When a Theme Set has been customized, you can save it under a new
> name, to persist the customizations.
> 
> 3) "Revert" means remove those customizations, i.e. set the gconf
> keys
> for the currently selected metatheme key to their defaults.  
> 
> 4) If the dialog is instant-apply, then selecting a new Theme Set
> will
> discard the current one, including the customizations; thus a dialog
> should pop up allowing the user to either discard the custom set or
> "Save As".
> 
> 5) Depending on how long it takes to apply a metatheme we may wish
> to
> consider not making metathemer instant-apply, and adding an "Apply"
> button.
> 
> 6) The "Preview" panel is useful even if we use instant-apply, since
> it
> will give faster visual feedback than waiting for the new settings
> to
> propagate when browsing.  We could also consider using a GtkTreeView
> list instead of a drop-down listbox, and using Ctrl-arrow navigation
> to
> browse the previews without selecting a new theme.  Preview is also
> useful since it shows the "uncustomized" snapshot of the theme, not
> the
> custom version, so it gives info on the results of a "Revert"
> operation.
> 
> 7) Previews can be auto-generated in response to "Save As..."; by
> default we can snapshot the upper-left-corner of the screen, but in
> the
> Save As dialog we can allow the user to select a different snapshot
> region.
> 
> This info and more will be put in the gep, which we'll try to post
> tomorrow.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Bill
>