Re: GEP-2 Theme Sets (aka Metathemer)

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> Ah yes... FWIW I heard Bill saying on Friday that he thought thumbnails
> were far too small and he'd prefer the dropdown list/one big preview
> model.  I kind of agree, it's hard to see imagine how you can get much
> of an impression of the theme in something that size, especially if
> you're drawing the elements actual size.  Even in the screenshot above,
> where the thumbnails only show the metacity theme, you can't really see
> some key visual elements of the theme :/

The information is much more useful when it can be scanned quickly
before selection is made. Having to click on each item in the list to
get an idea of what it looks like is tedious and particularly unhelpful
once the user already has a basic knowledge of the themes and only needs
little reminders what some random theme is. What I would recommend is
having small thumbnails (about 50% of full size, and displaying very
small windows, say something like
http://www.stanford.edu/~snickell/shot.png) and then a larger version
showing more controls when you actually select an item (it will also be
instant applied, so the controls are just so you see more than what
already happens to be on the screen).

-Seth