Re: User interface suggestions

[thristian atdot org]

On Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 10:43:19AM +0100, Jörg Rathlev wrote:
> It seems I got the "reply-to" wrong another time :-(
> 
> UI wishlist += A mail client that recognizes mailing list messages and then
> offers an extra command "reply to list".

Your wish is answered. After telling mutt that I'm subscribed to
gnome-gui-list gnome org, I can hit "L" instead of the usual "r" it
Just Works.

> > > I would like a icon-only menu with an array of icons that i
> > could arrange
> > > myself. A sort of program palette with a changable size in
> > multiplies of the
> > > icon size, perhaps. It could be a bit like a drawer, only 2D
> > instead of 1D,
> > > and with no shrink-wrap effect... (I mean that in order to have
> > groups of things
> >  > there also has to be distance between them. The drawers don't have
> > that.)

A 2D Panel... there could well be something in that. I like the
suggestion of putting it in a drawer, like the very popular "dockable
windows" in MacOS8. For those that haven't seen this, if you drag a
regular file-manager window to the bottom of the screen, the
dotted-outline changes, and if you let go, all you're left with is a
tab sticking up from the bottom of the screen containing the window's
titlebar text. Click on the tab once, and the window shoots up from
the bottom of the screen, much like a GNOME Drawer, and when you click
on the tab again, it shoots back down.

It would be nice to be able to embed a Bonobo component in the Panel,
so's then we could just swallow a Nautilus view into a drawer for
similar functionality. For example, once I had a drawer containing
only one item - a swallowed gnome-term running genius or bc. It wasn't
a thin strip like the regular drawers, either, it was pretty much
square.

> > Sounds a bit like the Microsoft Office sidebar... which I have to say I
> > use all the time on Windows, even though I never actually use Microsoft
> > Office!
> 
> Or like the Windows "quick start area" in the task bar. This is a great
> feature, I use it all the time to start Internet Explorer very quickly and
> have some of my other commonly used apps in there. But it wouldn't work
> without easily recognizable icons...

Oddly, GNOME already has a UI component allowing quick, one-click
access to a user-defined set of applications, customisable via
drag-n-drop. It's called the Panel.

> If you want to see really good icon design (well, at least I think it's
> good), take a look at Microsoft's icons. They're also using "truecolor" now,
> but they've kept their basic  design principles. The new icons of Office
> 2000 are probably the best example - they use only one color (well, two
> actually if you count the white background), but have a different color for
> each application and a very simple logo inside.

On the other hand, I've known a few people who think the O2K icons are
lousy - not least because they're all the same shape, and they don't
make use of the color-depth available to them. 

But in general, Microsoft icon design is very good. I began to learn
the "Microsoft style" in the Win3.1 days, and it's simple but
effective.

<snip most>

> "Coloring or graying the icon’s outline makes the icon appear less distinct
> on the desktop. Remember that the user can change the background color of
> the desktop as well as its pattern, so your icon may not be displayed
> against the background on which you designed it."

Note that the Win9x design guides suggest that the upper-left of each
icon should be dark grey, not black, to go with the "3d" feel of the
rest of the OS.

My main problem with the GNOME icon canon at the moment is they're all
undeniably Tigert's work. Not to bash Tigert, he's done some stunning
stuff and I'm a great admirer of his work, but all his icons have a
certain.. flamboyancy and style which *I* can't adequately copy, and
I'm sure a lot of other people can't, either. The nice thing about the
Microsoft style is pretty much anyone can do stuff in the same style.
Even if it doesn't look *good*, it's not too hard to make it not look
*sloppy*.

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