Re: [Gimp-developer] Fedback and personal comments about Gimp 2.8

[gg <gg catking net>]

On 08/03/12 20:53, Vincent Cadet wrote:
> However the behaviour of those sliders has [almost] nothing to do with
> ordinary sliders, hence I dubbed them "two-faced" sliders. It actually
> took me quite a while to figure out what was going on when I saw my
> current brush wizz to an unbelievable size!
>
> Nothing clearly advertises the behaviour of Gimp sliders. With this
> version, you*must*  be careful to the proper half you're picking, which is
> *not*  how sliders work in general. So if your sliders break the usual
> behaviour, make it obvious.

This interface element is badly designed as it stands.

Especially since it is novel, there must be clear indications that : a) 
there are different areas ; what they do.

Currently there seem to be three separate interactive areas superimposed 
without any visual delimiter showing that they even exist with separate 
functionality.

Suggestion: change text background colour so it shows a being something 
separate and its current (variable) size is clearly shown.

Use a slight tonal difference to indicate that the top and bottom halves 
are not the same zone: they have separate functionality.

The current cursors for fine and coarse  only help to confuse matters 
since on points up (only) and the other points left/right.  I can only 
guess that this was "the best we could do with existing cursors.

Hints are the same, so when trying to work out what is going on the user 
looks at the hint box for a hint and doesn't get one.

These all need changing , eg. :  "Brush angle coarse" /  "Brush angle fine"

I find the fact that a click in the lower half does nothing is confusing 
and unnecessarily different. A more consistent interaction would be for 
a click in either section to jump to cursor, then get the fine or coarse 
adjustment on slide.

The range of the fine adjust is way big enough to cope with slight error 
in placing the starting position. The need to click high half to get the 
starting point before fine tuning is a wasted operation.


If I pause during a coarse slide operation as I try to hit the value I 
need , the hint pops up and more or less obscures the the text showing 
the value I'm trying to set. Duh!


Inconsistencies between the two different forms of dropdown list is 
dis-routing.  eg Tool Options : Paintbrush

  click on the dynamics button gets a dropdown list (on the mouse up 
event)  with a stable selection. Another click to select.
  click on mode selector gets a drop down list (on the mouse down 
event)  with a selection that follows the mouse and requires another 
click to actually select.

Either way would be fine as long as the interaction is consistent 
throughout the program. Having both in the same dialogbox ... I refrain 
from passing comment on the obvious.


Finally, the decimal issue is not well though out. Having basically 
arbitrary decimal jumps to odd values like ?.37 .. ?.52  etc is usually 
 pointless and sometimes not what is required.

Do I really want a brush size of 2.16 rather than 2 ? This inevitably 
means clicking in the text entry section, dropping the mouse and editing 
with the keyboard.

I don't have a suggestion for the last issue off hte top of my head, so 
I'm just pointing out where it is unhelpful.


Most of those fixes could be implemented with minimal effort by those 
familiar with the code base.  So hopefully some of the defects could be 
fixed before this release hits the wider public.

regards, gg.