Re: GnomePropertyBox

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> Well, and example where automatic aply is bad would be the gtk theme
> selector. I want to scroll through the themes getting a rough idea which
> one is which, then I aply it to see what it really looks like, and then
> I often revert since I dont like the new theme as much as the old one.
> It takes time for all gtk apps to switch themes, so automatic aply would
> definatly not work for such a common task.

I see don't this rationale as making it imperative to include "revert",
"apply" buttons. All revert does is switch themes anyway, so the speed
issue isn't entirely relavent to wanting to go back to your old theme.
To "revert" you just select your old theme and everything changes back.

In terms of quick preview, its probably a bad interface to make people
click on each theme they want to preview anyway. Nautilus approaches
this by allowing theme makers to make little thumbnail icons which get
displayed in the list along with a short description of the theme. Its
easier for me to tell what all the themes generally look like this way
then having to go through a list and click on each entry (plus it looks
more attractive, which never hurts *wink*).

Part of the problem is that some distributions include a vast array of,
to be quite honest, attrociously ugly themes (resulting in a loooong
list of themes). While they may be of interest to a couple people, they
are probably not of general interest. By providing all these options,
distributions are in some sense doing users a diservice (I personally do
not like having to pick through a list of 50 themes to find the 3 or 4
that I'd actually use). It is also worthwhile to include a URI Link to
gtk.themes.org in the gtk theme dialogue (or themes.org if we end up
with an integrated theme system), and suggest that people look there for
other possibilities.

(another note is that it'd be nice if I could just click on a theme at
gtk.themes.org or sawmill.themes.org, and have it "happen". I was
pleasantly surprised to notice this behavior with FreeAmp themes, and
its pretty easy to do...just register the control panel dialogue with
GnomeVFS as accepting themes and then accept commandline arguments :-)

-Seth